10 Video Game Crossovers That Went Too Far

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is a rather bold attempt at combining Nintendo’s fantastical war titles Fire Emblem with Atlus’ dark JRPG series Shin Megami Tensei.

Two huge franchises in Japan with growing popularity internationally, it was a truly intriguing prospect to take the two, stick them in a blender and see what came out. The result was a frankly bizarre roleplaying game that focuses on the world of idol music in modern day Japan.

Now, Tokyo Mirage Sessions isn’t a bad game by any means and there are some things it absolutely does right… but it would be basically the same game if you took the inspiring franchises out of it. Fire Emblem fans were put off immediately by how the characters from the last two games were just dragged and dropped from mediaeval fantasy into a modern Tokyo with literal regard.

On the Atlus side of things, TMS uses some of Shin Megami Tensei’s battle system style but ditches the dark and dystopian tone of the series for bright and colourful lights and high energy J-pop.

In fact, when marketing the Switch port, the trailer described the game as a collaboration between Fire Emblem and “the world of Atlus”, perhaps to soften the blow that, whilst a decent game, it wasn’t much of a crossover.