creating a tie-in video game during the OVA's production. Initially pitched to Nintendo and turned down due to the book's mature elements, the game license was pitched to other publishers. The license to develop a game based on Nishitani's work was simultaneously acquired by two companies; Atlus who applied through Namco, and Telenet Japan. The two companies were willing to work on the same project, but wanted to differentiate their products. As the Famicom was noted for action-based titles and PCs for traditional role-playing games, the two companies decided to respectively play against platform expectations. Two different game projects were created with Tokuma Shoten's supervision under the Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei title; Atlus created a traditional role-playing game which was published by Namco, while Atlus and Telenet collaborated on an action role-playing game which would be published by Telenet. The two versions were developed concurrently, although the version by Telenet was the first to be completed. The Atlus version was directed by Kouji Okada, while the scenario's original elements were written by Kazunari Suzuki. Sprite and promotional artwork was designed by Esaki Minoru, and the music was composed by Tsukasa Masuko. During the early phases, the gameplay concept was a near-copy of the gameplay style of the Wizardry series, attributed by Suzuki to their superiors being fans of the series. Suzuki insisted on the inclusion of some new feature which would distinguish it from Wizardry. This resulted in the creation of the demon negotiation system. Okada later stated that demon negotiation was decided upon from an early stage. Speaking later about the first-person exploration, Okada was highly critical, feeling that after all their efforts "All we had left after everything was said and done were lots and lots of long, winding dungeons!". Storage space on the cartridge was a recurring concern for the team, with Suzuki using unspecified programming tricks to include high-quality sprite graphics. Due to the rules of the gaming industry at the time, the teams and studios either went uncredited or had pseudonyms, with Masuko being credited as "Project Satan". Nishitani was deeply involved in planning the game, contributing suggestions and advice for the project. According to Okada, a major issue during development was faithfully following the novel's plot due to the limited hardware space on the Famicom cartridge, together with the necessity of creating a compelling gameplay experience. With this in mind, the team picked