By: Persephone Pond

The ‘Persona’ series is a series of games comprising 23 total official and spin off games that started releasing in 1996. In this article, I’ll be going over how the ‘Persona’ games came to exist and more historical facts about this franchise.

The ‘Persona’ games are spin offs of a series called ‘Shin Megami Tensei’. These games started as a part of the ‘Shin Megami Tensei’ series, but used a different name as they were being released in the West.

The first ‘Shin Megami Tensei’ game was released in 1987 on a console called Famicom, and a total of 14 more official games have been released since, the latest being in 2021.

Altus, the production company, started releasing ‘Persona’ games in English, and due to their growing popularity, has continued their production. These spin offs grew to hold even more popularity worldwide than the original games, and as the production of ‘Shin Megami Tensei’ didn’t cease, the ‘Persona’ franchise grew to be what Atlus’ more known for.

‘Revelations: Persona’ was the first of its series to be released outside of Japan in 1996 for the original Playstation. Following its release came ‘Persona 2: Innocent Sin’ and ‘Persona 2: Eternal Punishment’ in 1999 and 2000, then came ‘Persona 3’ in 2006, ‘Persona 4’ in 2008, and ‘Persona 5’ in 2016. These games all have very similar premises and basic world building, but are all self contained and separate from one another. Many spin offs and mini games were also produced in the years surrounding these core games.

Over the years, Atlus has worked on reproducing many of the core ‘Persona’ games, giving them extended content, bug fixes, and graphic upgrades. ‘Persona 3 Portable’ was released in 2009, ‘Persona 4 Golden’ was released in 2012, and ‘Persona 5 Royal’ was released in 2019. These are significant upgrades from their original games and are often recommended over their counterparts.

Atlus hasn’t stopped releasing more games in this series. No ‘Persona’ games were released in 2021 or 2022, but Atlus soon recovered from that few year gap and just a few days ago on November 16th, released ‘Persona 5 Tactica’, a spin off mini game of ‘Persona 5 Royal’. In addition to this new release, Atlus is releasing another rendition of ‘Persona 3’ titled ‘Persona 3 Reload’ in February 2024 and it’s rumored that Atlus is also currently planning and starting the production process of ‘Persona 6’, which wouldn’t be released until 2025 or 2026.

All of these games are wonderful and engaging and are all worth the play. The extensive history of the ‘Persona’ games is only one aspect of what makes them fun and interesting, and I would highly recommend the download if you’re looking for something fun to get into.

You can find the Persona games across all major platforms.