 Catherine Full Body is an interesting choice for the Nintendo Switch. Well, Catherine Full Body is an interesting choice in general. The story is a nuanced look at the challenges of growing older and maintaining or abandoning a long-term relationship once the initial spark of romance has faded. The gameplay involves solving block puzzles while transforming slowly into a cartoon sheep. Of all the games for Atlas to port to the Nintendo Switch, this feels like a particularly odd choice. Especially considering how desperate Joker fans are to see Persona 5 or any of the other Persona games on the platform. Looking at the history of its development though, Catherine Full Body is the perfect game for Atlas to release on the Switch first. Why? Because right from the start, Catherine has been the canary in Atlas's proverbial coalmine. This was the first game that Atlas made for HD consoles. It was made in part to help prepare and practice for Persona 5, and Atlas often uses it to test out new publishing platforms. When work drew to a close on Persona 4, the team at Atlas knew that Persona 5 was the next logical step. However, with the leap in technology from the PlayStation 2 to PlayStation 3, they all knew that a lot more was expected of them in terms of animation and artwork. Everyone agreed that they weren't yet ready for Persona 5. One of the higher-ups at the company warned at the time, if you do it suddenly, you'll be in serious trouble. So, the team decided to work on a smaller project first to test the waters. This started life as a simple puzzle game without a solid story or setting. The team toyed with setting this title on a battlefield, before deciding to skew closer to the standard Persona setting. Hence, they developed the story of a man with relationship troubles that manifest as otherworldly nightmares. Essentially, a Persona game for world-weary adults. Because Catherine was a much smaller game, it was the perfect opportunity to practice HD art design and animation. It was also an opportunity for Atlas to experiment with releasing on multiple consoles, as it was designed to run on both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. Development was tumultuous to say the least. At the start, the team was split, with some artists collaborating on the beginnings of Catherine, while others were needed to add final polish to Persona 4. This led to some frustration as key developers had to wrap their heads around quickly shifting between the different needs of the two projects. Nevertheless, Catherine offered everyone the chance to try something new and experiment. A lot of work went into developing the game's eye-catching art style and, a first for Atlas, realistically proportioned character models. When it eventually came time to begin working on Persona 5 in earnest, this art style was carried across. Development on the new role-playing game was made a lot easier thanks to the experimentation that had been possible on Catherine. Upon release, Catherine sold better than expected, and as such, the game's publisher, Sega, was eager to bring it to even more platforms. As we noted in our recent video on Persona 4, Atlas seems to have been hesitant about this move. The company collected plenty of market research in an attempt to find out whether their games would really sell well on PC or other platforms. When fans seemed enthusiastic about Persona on PC, Atlas chose to release Catherine first, seemingly to gauge interest in future releases. At the time, Sega's Executive Vice President of Publishing, John Clark, said, I think for us it was always step one. Let's launch Catherine, which then gives the IP owners and business owners at Atlas the ability to evaluate the success and how that can fit in for their future roadmap. I'm pleased to say they now have that information, so they're able to evaluate it. Similarly, it seems very likely that Atlas is using Catherine as a test project on the Switch, seeing what response the game gets when it releases. As the official Atlas Twitter account has pointed out, the Switch might be the perfect way to play the game, as handheld mode helps avoid awkward questions onlookers might have about the game's more romantic scenes. It seems that the moral is, you don't need to learn everything all at once. Just as Atlas made Catherine to practice before tackling Persona 5, you can make daunting challenges feel more manageable by breaking them into smaller tasks. There's no shame in growing slowly, it's okay to simply take your time.