Cover Art Chronicles: Atlus and the Wanderer

You'd be hard-pressed to find a lot of gamers who know what Shiren the Wanderer is, even among a subset of them who happen to like RPGs. Shiren has both the fortunate and unfortunate reality of belonging to the roguelike genre, a set of games whose itinerary it is to be very challenging, and force the player to think about every decision they make lest they suffer the consequences. It's not a popular genre due to how nail-bitingly hardcore it is, but gamers with a masochistic streak would like them.

(Note: This excludes the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games.)

Considering that, it's probably not a surprise to see that Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer for DS -- a remake of the original SNES game -- sold pretty poorly in both America and Europe. Sega admittedly took a chance on publishing it, though they could have given it a better cover in the process. One of the best aspects of the recent Shiren titles is the great artwork, so who knows why Sega decided on a 16-bit era throwback for release outside of Japan. Covers usually don't affect a game's sales too much in most cases, but this one was so bad that it definitely hurt it. It's one of the worst Japanese-to-American cover transitions in recent memory.

Fortunately, the franchise is getting another chance, this time from Atlus with Shiren 3 -- though it's understandably being called Shiren the Wanderer in America, likely because no one knows the previous game existed! It's going to be tough, but they have a good chance of making this game a cult hit when they release it in Spring 2010. This is a company that knows how to market a game towards niche audiences to an almost frightening degree, so I think a new audience could gravitate towards it. Even if it is on a console whose third-party sales are sadly mediocre; though some niche games still manage to sell well on it -- see Muramasa: The Demon Blade. They're starting on the right foot, at least:

Nice to see the cover uses the Japanese art this time to a tee. There's no word on if Atlus is localizing the recently announced PSP port, due for a Japanese release on January 28. They localized both the PS2 and Wii versions of Baroque back in 2008, so there's a chance. A pity it's not enough of a frequent occurrence to guess whether they'll actually release both. Details say the PSP version is being made more accessible to players new to the franchise, so releasing this one would be a better idea than the Wii version.

Speaking of Shiren's art, it's a shame to see that they're changing the art style for the Japanese release of Shiren the Wanderer 4 for DS. It looks as if the franchise's developer, Chunsoft, wants to aim the game towards a wider audience. That's perfectly fine and all, but...ouch. Another interesting tidbit about the game is that Spike is publishing it in Japan, not Sega. Spike is also publishing the aforementioned PSP port of Shiren 3. Apparently, something happened between Chunsoft and Sega's relationship.

Logic would follow that if Shiren 3 does well enough in America, hopefully on both consoles if applicable, Shiren the Wanderer DS 2 (a remake of the GBC game, not Shiren the Wanderer 2 the N64 game) and Shiren 4 would be localized. Atlus has been able to get roguelikes to sell well before with the Izuna titles, but Shiren's much more of a beast in terms of its difficulty level. Wish them luck, because they're going to need it.