Trivia / Digital Devil Story

• Approval of God: If Tweets by the author are anything to go by, Aya Nishitani is fine with fans translating his works if they're freely available, occasionally writing in English to give his thoughts. Though his only concern is whether the fan translations are done right due to things being lost in translation.
• Fan Translation: Only way the English-speaking world is ever going to read these. French-speakers too.
• Franchise Ownership Acquisition: Author Aya Nishitani was the creator of the original Digital Devil Story series of novels. Atlus would adapt the novels into a video game, Megami Tensei, in 1987. In 1992, Atlus would outright buy the franchise itself from the author after which the Shin Megami Tensei series would become one of Atlus's Cash Cow Franchises.
• No Export for You: In spite of Shin Megami Tensei becoming much more popular in the West, to the point where even the previously Japan-only games are being localized and ported, this will likely never see the light of day in English outside of fan translations.
• Referenced by...: Persona 5 references the novel as an incorrect answer to one of the tests during the first exam period.
• Technology Marches On:
  • AI are programmed via command-line interface, and the first time Nakajima tries to use his program, he gets an OUT OF MEMORY error. The text of the translation even invokes this, when mentioning that most people hadn't even heard of the Internet yet.
  • Nakajima has to use a traditional personal computer, hooked into the mains and all, to use the demon summoning program. If the novel was written today, he probably would've done it on a laptop or a cellphone (and indeed, Devil Survivor 2 and Shin Megami Tensei IV feature demons being summoned with cellphones).
• Write What You Know: In an interview, Nishitani said he came up with the concept for the Demon Summoning Program from his interest in astrology as a kid that later in life led him to write and sell software for it. Then he noticed the connection between Western Black Magic and the position of the planets, and a computer's capability to simulate the latter, and so the idea of practicing magic itself on the PC was born.

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