Shin Megami Tensei comes to PC as a free Metroidvania
Hee-holy crud, it's real?
The long-running Shin Megami Tensei series has worn many strange hats over the years. From singular (and now defunct) PC MMO to handheld dungeon crawlers and even spinning off into the mega-popular multi-genre Persona line, there are few unifying elements behind the series outside of adorable snow-sprite Jack Frost.
To promote the upcoming 3DS re-release of SMT: Strange Journey, Atlus pushed out a fake trailer for a platform adventure starring the little snowman and his fiery brother Jack 'O Lantern. It did look like a nice game, though.
One double-fakeout later, and Atlus confirmed that not only was the the 'fake' game shown real, but free, on PC, and out now. Better still for us english-speaking types, there's a (partial and fan-made) translation patch, so hit the jump for the trailer that started it all, the game, and the translation.
Developed by a crew led by Japanese indie Krobon, SMT: Synchronicity Prologue is a short-ish Metroidvania with cute sprites, a decent amount of story to chew through and a lot of cleverly used spirits, monsters and other weirdos from the series adeptly adapted from RPG format to platformer enemies.
You can grab the game here (scroll down, it's the big blue button), and thanks to a lovely fellow called Brent, you can enjoy it in English by following the instructions on Twitter here. There are some things still untranslated and there may be more to come later, but it's playable enough as-is.
Synchronicity Prologue isn't the first game from Krobon and crew, by any means. You can get his Castlevania'y Pharaoh Rebirth on Steam here, and he did another promotional game a while back; A very solid Mega Man parody based on comedy fantasy anime KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on this Wonderful World, bundled with the Japanese Season 2 Blu-Ray release of the show. While of questionable legality (being a pack-in bonus and all) there is a fan-translated version floating around as well.
Do be warned that Atlus will be taking down the Synchronicity Prologue downloads after December 24th, because there is only a finite amount of fun and joy in this world and they are jealously guarding their supply, so grab it while you can.