Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Children Red Book (Game Boy Color, Japanese Import) - Authentic Atlus Cartridge, Tested

Talk the demons into joining you

Atlus’s Megami Tensei series, the family Persona comes from, has always had an odd hook: you don’t catch the demons, you talk them into joining you, then fuse them into stronger ones. Devil Children (2000) rebuilt that for younger players, with friendlier art and easier-to-follow negotiation. This is the Red Book (Aka no Sho), the first game in the Devil Children series, released the same day as its twin, the Black Book.

You play Mirai, whose father vanished into the demon world, partnered with a pink griffon named Veil. The Black Book follows a different hero, Setsuna, with the Cerberus pup Cool.

A full Pokémon-era launch

It arrived as a Japanese multimedia event: the DeviChil anime started on TV about six weeks before the game, and a manga ran in Comic BomBom. Atlus later remade it for PlayStation and put it on the 3DS Virtual Console, all in Japan only. The West got the later Game Boy Advance books as DemiKids in 2003; these first books never left Japan.

About the Japanese

Negotiation is conversation, so this is a text-heavy game, more so than Dragon Quest Monsters. The Black Book has a fan translation; I have not found one for the Red Book. It is a black dual-mode cart, so it plays on an original Game Boy, in color on a Color, and with a border on a Super Game Boy.

This is the cart for Megami Tensei collectors and Japanese readers who want the demon series’ strangest branch on the shelf.

Other Pokémon-era monster games in the shop: Dragon Quest Monsters, Medarot and Sanrio Timenet.