 Tokyo Mirage Session Sharp FE is what happens when you throw a persona game in a Fire Emblem game in a blender and drink whatever comes out. The game answers the question we never knew we needed to ask. What if a group of fantasy heroes tried to become pop stars? It's no wonder the game's premise ended up being so weird. Tokyo Mirage Sessions very nearly didn't get made at all. It was only through the power of extraordinary teamwork that creators at Nintendo and Atlas, led by three collaborating directors, were able to put together one of the most bizarre mash-ups in recent gaming history. Credit for the idea of the game belongs to co-director Kaori Ando. A veteran at Nintendo, Kaori dreamed about one day seeing two of her favourite game series, Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem, merged into a single game. Hitoshi Yamagami, a producer at Nintendo, agreed to take her pitch to Atlas, and so they went to beg for an opportunity to collaborate together. The response they got was… less than positive. Atlas said, Let us think about it. Which Nintendo took as a polite way of saying, No, not a chance. Later on, Atlas clarified this, telling their contacts at Nintendo, We're too busy and we can't do it right now. Kaori and Hitoshi were disappointed, but they were hardly going to lose sleep over this rejection. They had other things to get on with, and Hitoshi held on to a hope that perhaps this crossover still might happen one day. He later said, I was really bummed about it, but it wasn't as though they had straight-out said, No. So I told Kaori, I'm sure we'll cross paths with them again sometime. Hitoshi was right. It turned out that Star for Atlas had loved the idea of working on a Fire Emblem game, but they really had just been too busy at that instant to commit to another project. A year later, Atlas' then-CEO Naoto Hirakura got back in touch, saying, Is that talk still open? Yes. Yes, it absolutely was. Hitoshi was absolutely thrilled, and Nintendo and Atlas started discussing what kind of game they wanted to make. This was a hard question to answer. Was this going to be a strategy game or a role-playing game? Which studio would lead development? Which world should the game be set in? It was decided that Atlas would spearhead development, and all involved briefly considered making their collaboration a strategy game, but this didn't feel quite right. Second co-director Shinjiro Takada later said, The problem is, if you make it too much like a Fire Emblem game, then why doesn't intelligent systems just make it themselves? The goal for this was to do something that the Fire Emblem series can't do. In the end, the reason the game looks the way it does, the reason the content is the way it is, is because this is something we wanted to do as an Atlas game, a game only Atlas could make. For this reason, the combined teams decided that their work needed to be its own unique thing, not a Fire Emblem game, not a Shin Megami Tensei or a Persona game, a unique, original property that borrowed elements from their existing work. Even after the game was announced, then simply titled Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem, the creative team kept fretting over the specifics of merging their two game franchises. The game's third co-director, Mitsuru Hirata, said, Even I told myself, To think that a collaboration with Fire Emblem would shape up like this, and I was really surprised, even though I'm the one developing it. The team decided on a Persona-style modern setting, recreating real-world Tokyo locations as in Persona 5, but with this setting, in what way was this really a Fire Emblem game? Finally, a solution was found. Shinjiro explains, We were wondering, should we make Fire Emblem characters into humans that become friends with the main characters? That was one thing that changed throughout development. We were able to figure out throughout the scenario that we were going to make the Fire Emblem characters into demon-like figures, like the demons in Shin Megami Tensei. They would serve as heroes that helped your main characters in battle situations. Through a lot of trial and error, discussion and collaboration, the amalgamation of talent from Nintendo and Atlas were able to put together Tokyo Mirage Session's Sharpefie, a game that they felt perfectly blended together the core elements from their respective games. The moral of the story is that sometimes it's nice to listen to someone else's perspective. We all have different strengths and weaknesses, and when we work together, things might not always go smoothly, but they can lead to some incredible bursts of creativity and inspiration.