Revelations: The Demon Slayer is the localized English language version of Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible, which was first released for the original Game Boy, in Japan only, in 1992. This Game Boy Color version was developed by Multimedia Intelligence Transfer and published by Atlus, in Japan and North America, in 1999.

The Last Bible series is a handheld spin-off from the Megami Tensei series of JRPGs, and this is the only Last Bible game that was ever officially translated into English. Unfortunately the translation itself isn’t particularly brilliant (the use of tense in the game is frustratingly weird at times), and some changes were made to the game’s characters by either the publisher, or Nintendo, which fans of the series have been vocally critical of.

The Megami Tensei series has always been ‘problematic’ for the censorious Nintendo of America execs in the West, with them objecting to its mix of demon-summoning and religious motifs, and the Last Bible games were actually designed to tone down the ‘darker’ aspects of the series and make it more acceptable to children (by changing the demons to “monsters” instead). Which may seem strange considering that they decided to call it “Last Bible” (if you’re going to avoid falling foul of Nintendo of America‘s insistence that religious motifs be avoided at all costs, maybe avoid using the word “Bible” in your game’s title…). But anyway: this did get an official English language release in the West and it was modified before release. And to confuse matters even more the game’s title was also changed to “Revelations: The Demon Slayer” (which seems a bit stupid to me. Why try to tone the game down to make it more accessible to children, only to then call it “Demon Slayer“?! It seems to me that the Japanese and American counterparts were not singing from the same hymn sheet when developing the Last Bible games).

Revelations: The Demon Slayer has two gameplay options: Story Mode or Vs Mode. Story Mode is the single-player RPG, where the key gameplay mechanic is the ability to talk to monsters in order to persuade them to join your party, and Vs Mode allows two linked Game Boys to battle it out with their respective monsters.

One key thing to remember is that recruited monsters don’t level up like the human characters do, so don’t become more powerful over time, but you can ‘fuse’ (ie. combine) two monsters together in the hope that the one resulting monster will be more powerful, and therefore more useful in battle.

While Revelations: The Demon Slayer on the Game Boy Color is a decent enough RPG, and a welcome handheld adaptation of the Megami Tensei series, it’s also a bit hamstrung by the relatively poor localization, and the confusing story. Visually it’s also arguably inferior to the 1994 Sega Game Gear version. It does, however, have a very useful feature that the Game Gear version doesn’t have, which the ability to keep a newly-recruited monster if your roster is full. That said, I would still choose to play the Game Gear version of Last Bible over this. Or maybe even skip it entirely and play the much better sequel – Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible II – on the Game Boy Color instead.

Note: there are some ROM hacks available for this game. As well as Spanish, Portuguese and Polish translations there’s also a debug menu hack, and an improvement hack that changes some of the character sprites back to their original forms.

More: Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible on Wikipedia
More: Revelations: The Demon Slayer on Moby Games