Ahead of Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remaster’s release on PlayStation 4 and Switch next month, publisher Sega has provided the internet with a beautifully high-resolution version of the “Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series” sticker from the PlayStation 2 original’s box art in North America. The graphic has inexplicably been used in memes ever since, most recently in conjunction with other absurd internet humor like Big Chungus.
“The dev team initially thought it was a crazy idea to pursue a crossover across two different publishers,” Nocturne director Kazuyuki Yamai explained on the PlayStation blog. “However, they were also captivated by the idea of the two characters’ encountering one another and their ensuing battle. So they brought the proposal to Capcom, and the rest is history!”
Like the more popular Persona series spin-offs, Nocturne focuses on befriending and enslaving a bevy of supernatural entities known collectively as Demons. These potential party members are pulled liberally from worldwide mythology and religion; it’s possible in Nocturne, for example, to build a team that includes not only Devil May Cry anti-hero Dante but also the popular West Virginian cryptid Mothman and the Abrahamic archangel Gabriel.
While I would normally be all, “Silence, brand,” about something like this, I’m also a sucker for high-res recreations of artwork that’s hard to find otherwise. Sega is smart to embrace the Dante meme from a marketing perspective (ugh, sorry, just writing that phrase makes me sick to my stomach) but, more importantly, it’s good to have these sorts of historical artifacts readily available for archiving purposes.
And the memes too, of course. Can’t forget those.
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