While for many their first introduction to the greaterShin Megami Tenseiseries was through Persona, the Shin Megami Tensei games are themselves a far different beast from the more contemporary school-life of Persona. Even funnier is that Persona is itself a subseries of Shin Megami Tensei.

There are plenty of Shin Megami Tensei mainline games, though there are frankly just as many subseries as that, and countless games within each subseries to boot. It’s a pretty large series, with almost every game developed by Atlus falling somewhere along it. So let’s do our best to break down just how many there are.

How Many Mainline Shin Megami Tensei Games Are There?

Having startedall the way back in 1987, the Megami Tensei games began as video game adaptations of Aya Nishitani’s Digital Devil story book. Since they, they have king become a series in their own right with his books as their foundation. Take a look at each of the mainline games below.

1987

1990

1992

1994

2002

2003

2007

2009

2013

3DS

2016

2017

2021

2024

PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Switch

The Shin Megami Tensei games tend to getexpanded re-releases, though these change enough to justify being an entry in their own right.

Counting all of the various versions of these games, that would make a total of14 games. The original duo of Digital Devil Story games later got a combined remake for the SNES exclusively in Japan as well.

It’s when you get to the spin-off games thatthe number of games in the series balloonsdramatically.

How Many Spin-off Shin Megami Tensei Games Are There?

14 mainline games, that’s a pretty respectable number. Of course, any series big enough will get quite a few spin-offs. It’s not even that unusual for the number of spin-offs to exceed the number of mainline games. For Shin Megami Tensei though, the numbers are just funny. Almost everything Atlus has made is part of the series, and they’ve made a lot of games.

Due to the sheer number of games, re-releases, mobile, and regional exclusives,we’ve instead listed each subseries and the amount of games in theminstead. There is simply too many to list in one article.

5

3

17 (international releases)

Devil Children

7

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Children - Black Book and Red Book (2000)

2

4

No associated subseries

39

N/A

Havingseven dedicated subseriesis already an impressive feat in-and-of itself, thoughhaving 82 gamesspread across that is, well, staggering. Any developer would be proud to claim such a large number of titles. The majority of these series have released internationally as well, though very few of them are still available to play legally.

Important to note is that though Atlus developed the majority of these games,a not-insignificant number of them were developed by othersas well and published by Atlus.

How Many Shin Megami Tensei Games Are There In Total?

As you can tell by this point,the Shin Megami Tensei series is massive. Many tend to fall into the trap that Persona is the only major subseries, though Atlus has made a healthy amount of diversity in the series over the decades, giving them plenty of room to move in new directions with the games whenever they want.

So how many games is that in total?96 games. With only 14 of them being from the main series, that means thatspin-offs make up over 80% of the entire series. That’s a pretty large proportion and so it’s no surprise that many of those spin-off games got such dedicated fanbases in their own right.