A translation of this 4Gamer article from December 9, 2017, featuring an interview with producer Kazumasa “Habumon” Habu about the video game Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker’s Memory.

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Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker’s Memory (hereinafter, Hacker’s Memory) for PS4/Vita is set to be released by Bandai Namco Entertainment on December 14, 2017. The previous game, Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth, was released with the slogan “for Digimon fans who have become adults”, and brought a cyberpunk atmosphere to the forefront that had never been seen before in any Digimon game, earning itself high acclaim among Digimon fans.

Here at 4Gamer, we’ve interviewed producer Kazumasa Habu about the release of its upcoming sequel, Hacker’s Memory, to hear about the highlights of this game, the history of the Digimon Story series, and future prospects for Digimon games.

Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker’s Memory official site

4Gamer: Thank you for speaking with us today. This is your first time appearing on 4Gamer, so can you please tell us about your career up until now?

Kazumasa Habu (hereinafter, Habu): I was originally from Namco, and was involved as a visual designer for games such as the Tekken and Soul Calibur series. After that, Bandai and Namco emerged into Bandai Namco games, I was moved from development to production for the Bandai side’s games, and was put in charge of Digimon.

4Gamer: Digimon is quite the change from Tekken and Soul Calibur.

Habu: I wasn’t part of the Digimon generation myself, but I think the fun of collecting and raising characters is a universal thing. In my generation, we had Bikkuriman¹, and I figured it’d be nice to try out a game with extensive lore and all sorts of characters.

4Gamer: Which Digimon game did you end up starting with?

Habu: I was involved with Digimon Story Lost Evolution. Ryou Mito-san was the producer of the Digimon Story series at the time, so my first experience with Digimon games involved being assistant producer under him.
During production, planning for the Digimon Xros Wars anime began, so after Lost Evolution was completed, I was made producer for its tie-in game, Digimon Story Super Xros Wars.

4Gamer: Prior to Cyber Sleuth, the Digimon Story series character design and partner Digimon felt more closely tied to the anime, but was this something that was consciously done?

Habu:  Hmm, I think there’s a bit of misunderstanding regarding that. Digimon’s console games aren’t always anime-based. Of course, there are games based on the anime, but Digimon was originally based on LCD games, and console games such as Digital Monster Ver. S ~Digimon Tamers~² were being developed before the first anime movie, Digimon Adventure, had ever aired. The world of Digimon was expanded further in the January 1999 game Digimon World, and so in fact the Digimon game series has been growing in its own way.

4Gamer: So the Story series and the anime started off as completely separate, then. On the other hand, the monsters that appear in the Digimon Story series are based on the anime art, and the anime characters do also appear as cameos.

Habu: The main reason why anime characters and such appear as cameos is simply that the corresponding anime was being broadcast at the same time. At the time, Digimon games were being developed for children, and the core business model was to have them watch the anime and get them interested in Digimon and buy other related products. Although the games would be original stories, we felt that the target audience of children would be disappointed if the monsters and characters from the anime weren’t in the game.
For that reason, the main characters in Lost Evolution were Agumon and Gaomon, who were prominent in Digimon Savers.

4Gamer: I see.

Habu: There are several games that have been tied more deeply to the anime, such as Digimon Adventure Anode Tamer & Cathode Tamer for the WonderSwan, Digimon Savers Another Mission for the PS2, and Digimon Adventure for PSP. However, other than Super Xros Wars, the worldbuilding and lore for the Story series has no basis on the anime.

4Gamer: As was mentioned earlier, the Digimon series was originally developed for children, but it seems like this has shifted to being for adults since Digimon World Re:Digitize was released in 2012. Cyber Sleuth also has the slogan “for Digimon fans who have become adults”. What was the turning point for this?

Habu: Personally, I believe the turning point was Super Xros Wars. Xros Wars was an anime that tried to gain a new audience of children with the concept of “union” instead of “evolution”, but the actual audience ended up much higher than the projected target age group.
For both Lost Evolution and Super Xros Wars, which were released during the broadcast of the anime, our survey data showed that the buyers were generally high school students and university students…in other words, people who had been keeping up with the Digimon franchise since the days of the LCD toys and the original anime.
The Xros Wars anime wasn’t able to get much of an audience of children, and since the actual playerbase watching it was composed of long-time Digimon fans, naturally, said playerbase didn’t want Xros Wars‘s “union” as much as they wanted “evolution”.
As a result, Super Xros Wars received a lot of harsh criticism from the playerbase, like “this isn’t what Digimon is supposed to be!”

4Gamer: So there was a gap between what the playerbase wanted and what the developers thought.

Habu: Yes. Once we saw what was going on, we realized that by developing games with the idea “Digimon is for children!”, we had ended up into a situation “Did we end up missing the actual fans of Digimon who are supporting this series?”
Therefore, I came to the idea “let’s make something more for adults for the next game!”, and so we made Re:Digitize and a PSP game based on the anime, Digimon Adventure. However, when we started on those projects, we ended up having some difficulties.

4Gamer: Such as?

Habu: There is a very strong perception that “Digimon is for children”, a perception among people from within the company, people outside the company, our business clients and partners, and it was difficult for them to understand that we were developing products targeted at adults. “Why are you putting this on the PSP? Something for children should be on the 3DS,” and such.
Digimon was in a very difficult situation at the time, because Lost Evolution and Super Xros Wars had poor yields, and our budget ended up very tight. Despite that, though, the development company did its best, and we managed to release Re:Digitize.

4Gamer: At the time, there was a lot of excitement over the idea that “a new game will be released using the original Digimon World’s system!”

Habu: Looking back now, the game had quite a few weak points, and there are a lot of things we regret about it, but Re:Digitize sold well, and the Digimon Collectors mobile game that was also running at the time greatly exceeded expectations.
As a result of our ventures into selling products that targeted an older age group, the company started to have a better grasp of the idea “we can make Digimon for adults,” and that’s how Cyber Sleuth became a game entirely for the adult audience.

4Gamer: How old are Digimon game players now?

Habu: We’re currently making Digimon games via the Digimon World series and the Digimon Story series, but the World series catches well with the LCD game generation, and the average player is around 25. The Story series has an audience that’s younger by about one or two years. The Story series’s initial release coincided with the broadcast of Digimon Savers, so it’s composed of a slightly younger generation.

4Gamer: So the target audience is composed of people in their twenties.

Habu: Cyber Sleuth is aimed at people in their twenties who watched the anime when they were younger, and it was a game that started the concept of redefining Digimon in such a way that adults will go “oh, this is fascinating.”

4Gamer: I get the impression that Cyber Sleuth is even more of a game for adults than anything else before it.

Habu: It is. However, although it has a different feel visually, the game’s world was fundamentally built on the idea that we should put in Digimon’s “passion points” that had been gathered through history into where they needed to be.
The LCD toys’ lore was based on the idea that a digital life form, “Digimon”, was a self-evolving AI created when hackers attached wireframes and textures to computer viruses in cyberspace. At the time, Windows 95 had just come out and PCs were increasing in popularity, and there was a ton of excitement over imagining how the world of the Internet would evolve and grow.
Coming from this sort of background, Digimon is a very difficult series to market for children. It was made into an anime, and the franchise expanded into different sorts of media, and it ended up becoming more of a fantasy series.

4Gamer: There are certainly more Digimon of the “superhero” sort of design than there used to be.

Habu: Right. So instead of cutting out the hard sci-fi world that emerged from Digimon’s roots, or the fantasy world that emerged from the anime, Cyber Sleuth was made with the idea of bringing the two together.
At the beginning of the story, hackers are the only one to use Digimon within cyberspace, but once the characters get involved with Digimon, they gradually learn that they are not simply just computer programs but living creatures in a world separate from that of humans, and appear in this world through computers and machines used by human society. While it starts by introducing the premise of the LCD games, it eventually expands to include the world of the Digimon anime.

4Gamer: So the aim of Cyber Sleuth was to embody the history of the Digimon franchise itself.

Habu: Right. The way that the characters gain awareness about the Digimon within the game is meant to connect with the real-life history of Digimon. Cyber Sleuth‘s core concept was to tell that sort of story.

4Gamer: It was surprising to learn that Digimon were originally computer viruses. People from the LCD game generation might think “oh, they used to have this kind of lore,” but it’s alien to the anime generation.

Habu: Personally, I thought, “this is a ‘passion point’ for Digimon!”, and thought about how to bring those worlds together.
Although this is a double-edged sword when it comes to Digimon, it has a special thing about it in that the world and lore changes with every series. For the TV anime series, only Adventure and 02 are connected, but after that, every series is depicted as a completely different world, or an alternate universe.
Also, since this is a franchise that has been going for a long time, one’s impression of Digimon changes depending on which Digimon work they started with. For Cyber Sleuth, we hoped that people of all ages, while enjoying the game, could reaffirm the concept of what Digimon is supposed to be.

Keeping up the pace for the series fans, and depicting the story behind the scenes from the last game

4Gamer: It seems like there have been a lot of exciting things in the past, but we should move onto talking about Hacker’s Memory. Firstly, please tell us how this game was developed.

Habu: Cyber Sleuth succeeded as a project, and talks about making the next Digimon Story came up. The goal of said sequel was to properly take into account not only the fans in Japan but also the overseas market.

4Gamer: Cyber Sleuth seems to have a very good reputation overseas.

Habu: We received a lot of praise from Japan, but we also received praise from overseas fans, and so we began to expand worldwide.
However, the PS4 is considered the mainstream console overseas, and the PS Vita is not even stocked in very many stores. Even for Cyber Sleuth, the packaged version was a PS4 port.

4Gamer: Digimon World -next 0rder-‘s overseas versions were also a PS4 port based on the PS Vita version.

Habu: Yes. So we decided to have the next game based on the PS4. However, that meant we’d have to remake the game engine for the PS4 and update all of the graphics. That would require three to four years to make a solid product from scratch, and that would leave a long time to wait after Cyber Sleuth‘s release.
We believe that “keeping up the pace for fans” is very important to the Digimon franchise’s longevity, and so it becomes very important to provide a steady stream of content.
So, while we started work on a completely new Digimon Story game, we felt that we could provide a story depicting a new side of Cyber Sleuth, Hacker’s Memory, as content that could keep up the pace for fans.

4Gamer: Is there a completely new Digimon Story game in development besides Hacker’s Memory? That’s quite a surprise to hear.

Habu: Hacker’s Memory is, officially, not “a new game in the Digimon Story series”, but “a new game in the Cyber Sleuth series”, and it’s also our intent to present it that way as well. We also would like to provide something that fans who enjoyed the previous game can enjoy.

4Gamer: Hacker’s Memory is going to have Cyber Sleuth included in it by default³, but what made you decide to do such a bold thing?

Habu: We want to increase the number of Digimon Story fans. Hacker’s Memory is designed to be enjoyable even if you’ve never played Cyber Sleuth, but we think it becomes much more fun if you’ve played the previous game, because there are a lot of fun parts that will make you smile if you have.

4Gamer: So that’s why you just went ahead and tossed the entire previous game on it? (laughs)

Habu: Yes (laughs). There are probably a lot of people who might be thinking “there’s a new game coming out, but I won’t understand it unless I play the previous one.” The idea is to make it easier for those people to try it out. I hope this will increase the number of Story series fans as much as possible.

4Gamer: Hacker’s Memory is a story that takes place at the same time as Cyber Sleuth, but was this story planned in the worldbuilding for the previous game?

Habu: The story for this game was not planned at the time of Cyber Sleuth, but when we looked back at it, we felt that there were various parts of it that we would have liked to show more. In particular, the conflict between hackers was something I wanted to make a core part of the previous game, but the latter half ended up being about the Royal Knights, and the hackers faded more and more from the story.

4Gamer: It’s probably to be expected once the Royal Knights enter the picture.

Habu: The original idea with the hackers was supposed to be “what would an ordinary person do if they were to receive a Digimon?” In essence, it was supposed to be something that reflects the Digimon fans playing the game. The previous game did have these aspects in its sidequests, but we wanted to dig deeper into it with the main story.

4Gamer: The main character of the previous game (Takumi/Ami Aiba) very much felt like someone who was being portrayed as a conventional hero. They did show their emotions, but they didn’t necessarily feel like they were particularly full of expression.
On the other hand, the protagonist of this game, “Keisuke Amasawa”, feels like a bit of a darker-atmosphere character with a leery eye, but he also gives off the impression of someone from a humble background. Were you consciously trying to have it be such a sharp contrast with the previous game?

Habu: Yes. That said, although people saw this game’s protagonist and thought “he looks a bit villainous”, it’s not supposed to be that way (laughs). He’s intended more as a troublemaker sort, who gets carried away a bit too easily and charges in without thinking.
If you ever look at some of Suzuhito Yasuda-san’s work, there’s generally hero and a heroine, and then there’s another male friend next to the hero. He’s essentially supposed to be that guy.

4Gamer: You mentioned earlier “what would an ordinary person do if they were to receive a Digimon…”, so that would make him someone very much like an average person.

Habu: I feel that the older you get, the harder it is to empathize with a hot-blooded protagonist of a shounen manga. Rather, you end up empathizing more with a character who’s trying to do the right thing, even though it involves getting caught up in making decisions, feeling lost, and even feeling hurt sometimes. The main character of this game is the latter.
The last game’s protagonists were, in effect, superheroes. They were chosen people, they had special talents, and they had a certain fate and particular backstory. This time, however, this isn’t the case. These are so-called “unchosen” people. What would these sorts of average people, living an everyday life, do when they receive special powers in the form of a Digimon? When things happen, what would such people try to protect? We wanted to feature that kind of aspect.

4Gamer: So it’s a realistic story for an ordinary person.

Habu: When they’re faced with the potential destruction of the world, an average person wouldn’t immediately go “I’m going to charge into the scene and stop the world’s destruction!” Rather, I think the first thing they would do is think about how to protect their family, their deepest friends, and the community around them. Some of them may end up getting hurt, and some of them may end up losing, but they’ll still act for the sake of what they have to protect. This game is about that sort of narrative.

4Gamer: I see.

Habu: Another major theme we’re focusing on is “what is the boundary between the real world and the cyber world?” Thanks to her illness, Erika Mishima, the heroine of this game, has had her memory converted to data and stored in cyberspace, and she often worries about whether her “true” mind is in her actual body, or in the cyber world’s data. And if Digimon are data-based life forms, what would be “real” for them? It’s that sort of subject.
There are also the words “Butterfly Dream”⁴, referring to the parable about how it is impossible to distinguish dreams from reality, and so the protagonists’ team name, “Hudie”, is the Chinese word for “butterfly”.

4Gamer: We are looking forward to seeing more like the last game, being a game centered primarily for adults.
Incidentally, in this game, there’s a new system that allows you to buy and sell Digimon, but were you intending to bring up the question of whether a Digimon should be treated as an “object”, or a “living creature” with emotions?

Habu: Yes. I think there are various ways that different people could choose to approach a Digimon with. Some people see Digimon only as data, and some will treat it as a product, and some have no qualms about putting them up for sale. This doesn’t have an impact on the core of the story, but we did include it as an element that allows you to experience how events change depending on the player’s choices.

4Gamer: It’s said that there will be more than 70 new Digimon added onto those from the previous game, creating a total roster of more than 320, but the only Digimon announced so far is the North American-exclusive “Sistermon Ciel”. Are there any other new Digimon?

Habu: In regards to the new Digimon…I’m sorry, but I can’t give you an answer for this. I hope you will play the story and see for yourself.

The importance of the “what-if experience”, allowing players to try out different possibilities

4Gamer: The Digimon franchise will be celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, but because it’s a series that’s been going on for so long, so “what feels like Digimon” will differ depending on the person. For example, fans are often divided about which Digimon evolves into what and what makes sense for them, so does that make it difficult for the developers to account for such differences in “what feels like Digimon?”

Habu: We’re the creators, and we give priority to what the players think. After all, what the current playerbase wants is most important. Naturally, we had people who said “I was a Digimon fan as a child”, and we had people who could say “it’d be interesting if this Digimon could evolve into this one,” and because they could give us opinions much like those a fan would have, and because of their own knowledge of Digimon, we were able to make well-informed decisions based on that.
Fans gave us a lot of praise for Cyber Sleuth for maintaining the conventional evolution lines, but also having evolutionary lines that players might prefer, and even ones they wouldn’t expect, and I think that’s part of the “what-if experience” that is particular to this game, to “evolve your Digimon partner into your favorite Digimon and go on an adventure!”

4Gamer: The “what-if experience”?

Habu: It’s something important for any game, isn’t it? But especially for games with lots of collectible characters, like Digimon, I think there are fans who would say, “the anime was like this, but I’d like to do that instead!”
The “what-if” part is one of the most interesting aspects of the game, and I believe it’s our job to make something where you can enjoy that to its fullest. So in order to make that happen, we pay a lot of attention to the Digimon evolutionary branches and selecting what Digimon will appear.

4Gamer: In regards to the Digimon lineup, the starter Digimon in this game and the previous game were not necessarily the ones that belonged to the anime protagonists. Is this also a part of the “what-if experience” you mentioned?

Habu: Yes. The protagonists and the other characters’ partner Digimon are meant to inspire your imagination in ways such as “what if this Digimon were part of the protagonist team?” or “if this Digimon were to appear as an enemy, what would happen?”

4Gamer: The previous game had Palmon and Terriermon as potential partners, and those two had appeared as major characters’ partners in anime in the past, but it was surprising to see Hagurumon as an option.

Habu: As far as the starter selection for the previous game went, we did gamble a bit (laughs). Usually it’d just be Agumon, Gabumon…and so on and so forth.

4Gamer: Personally, I was very excited. “Hagurumon is on the front cover of the game!”, and then I immediately picked it as my starter (laughs).

Habu: Another reason that Agumon and Gabumon were not starters was that we wanted to have them play an active role in the game’s story. The protagonist’s partner Digimon can be evolved and swapped out to the player’s liking, so they’ll be prone to change depending on the player.
That’s what makes the Digimon Story series interesting, but it makes it difficult to have the actual story be about building a relationship with partner Digimon. For that reason, in Cyber Sleuth, we had Agumon and Gabumon be the partners of Nokia Shiramine instead.

4Gamer: How about the choice of the starter Digimon for this game? Tentomon and Gotsumon would make you think “Digimon Pendulum Ver. 1?”, but then there was Betamon instead of Otamamon.

Habu: In actuality, Betamon was the first one among those three that we chose to be a starter. Betamon isn’t very visible in the franchise nowadays, but in the LCD game “Digital Monster Ver. 1”, the very origin of Digimon itself, it was in the same position as Agumon.

4Gamer: At the time, your choices for Child-level Digimon were Agumon and Betamon.

Habu: When you take that part of Digimon history into account, Betamon could have easily been the Digimon associated with protagonists, instead of Agumon.

4Gamer: Ah, I see! So this is another “what-if” element, like what you said earlier.

Habu: Right. This game is about people who aren’t “heroes”, so we chose Tentomon, Gotsumon, and Betamon as three Digimon that would fit that theme.

4Gamer: Our conversation so far gives me the impression that you have strong feelings about “making Digimon who haven’t gotten the spotlight get a chance up front”. Even in Digimon World Re:Digitize Decode, the final form of Tyrannomon was RustTyrannomon, and the final form of Ogremon was Titamon.

Habu: Indeed. RustTyrannomon was put in with that exact intent. We also put in Titamon hoping to give Ogremon a more prominent role, as well.
I’m also responsible for putting out new Digimon, and would like to see them do well. For example, going back to the “what-if experience”, if you were attached to a Digimon that had died during the anime, you would want to see something that lets the Digimon survive and do more, and we felt it would be fun to let that kind of Digimon be one’s partner.

4Gamer: During an interview on the Digimon Game Community, you said that you wanted to continue filling in the evolution lines of existing Digimon.

Habu: Right now, there are Digimon that are missing cohesive lines from the Child to Ultimate levels. Of course, Digimon evolution lines have various branches, but I would like to be able to create evolution lines with a more lasting impression.

4Gamer: Each person has their own differing feelings on evolution lines, so it must be difficult to come up with new ones. In the anime, Angewomon used to evolve into Holydramon, but nowadays the franchise leans towards Ophanimon, and there are differing opinions on that.

Habu: Of course, which evolution line you prefer depends on the person, and I believe in having different possibilities. With Holydramon and Ophanimon, the impression comes from thinking, “oh, it used to evolve that way during that time.” The anime especially has evolution be something that depends on how the children’s hearts develop.

4Gamer: So you’re working on making a convincing evolutionary line while also going along with the sort of evolutionary possibilities fans would be able to imagine.

Habu: Right. I think one of the “passion points” in Digimon is being able to imagine a perfect course of evolution from Child to Adult to Perfect.
Beyond that, there are still Digimon from the early LCD games who have never appeared in a console game, so I would like to bring them in at some point. That’s another initiative I’d like to do in the future.

4Gamer: How about the Xros Wars Digimon? In the Digimon Game Community interview, you said that you’d like to implement the DigiXros system and have them appear.

Habu: I would like to implement the DigiXros fusion system eventually, but there are many other Digimon I would like to prioritize first. The Shoutmon here in Hacker’s Memory can only use standard evolution, but Xros Wars‘s DigiXros is characterized by combining multiple Digimon together, so if we were to put in other Xros Wars Digimon, we’d have to make a system to properly involve having multiple Digimon combine together.
In addition, I would like to have them actually play a vital role in the story.

Is the next Digimon Story game already in development? And another Digimon game, too?

4Gamer: You mentioned earlier that there’s also going to be another game following Hacker’s Memory. Please tell us how things are looking for the future.

Habu: Firstly, as I said earlier, we would like to continue providing more Digimon games to keep up the pace for the fans. We also want to create more fans of Digimon games in particular, so we want to make games that will appeal to people who have never touched a Digimon game before. We hope to make the games interesting so that people will take an interest in Digimon and the series will have more fans.

4Gamer: Is that why you’re focusing on the Story series for development?

Habu: Yes. We would like to make games that are easy for anyone to play, so we’re focusing on Digimon Story as the core, but we would also like to take on the challenge of making a new type of Digimon game⁵.

4Gamer: A new challenge?

Habu: Yes. For example, we’re thinking about making a game depicting a dramatic story with set partners, like those from the anime. As I mentioned earlier, in the Story series, the adventure involves changing and swapping out your partners, so it’s difficult to have that kind of narrative.

4Gamer: In that kind of game, the evolution routes and corresponding partners would end up depending on the player.

Habu: As far as evolution goes, I want to try something different from that of games like the Story series, in which evolution becomes possible simply by leveling them up. In the anime, partners evolve according to the growth of children’s hearts, so if we did something similar in the games, the evolution branches and relationships change depending on your actions during your adventure and how you treat your friends and their Digimon.

4Gamer: That kind of game would be very interesting.

Habu: For example, in Digimon Adventure, there is a scene where Greymon evolves into SkullGreymon, but I wonder what would happen if you allowed that kind of dark evolution to go even further. I feel that the theme of such human emotions being connected to the evolution of Digimon might be an interesting way to show off the “what-if experience” that is unique to video games.

4Gamer: But the more Digimon there are, once you start adding animations to give them a better sense of being “partners”, it must get harder and harder to do resource management.

Habu: It is. Resource sharing between games is absolutely necessary in order to make sure we have enough Digimon in each game, so I do my best to make the absolute best use of our resources.

4Gamer: Are resources being shared with Digimon Linkz⁶ (iOS/Android)? There are some Digimon in there with their own unique models, though.

Habu: Yes. The 3D models in Digimon Linkz are developed in such a way that we can manage the production line and share resources smoothly. Unfortunately, some of the Digimon in there are not even in Hacker’s Memory, but I would like to have them appear on a console game someday.

4Gamer: It would be nice if you could recreate the models for every game, but it would require way too many hours of manpower.

Habu: However, if you overuse the same models, you’ll get “the feeling of everything being reused”. Fans spend money every time they buy a game, so the challenge is how much of the graphics we can recreate while staying within budget. Since we’re going to be developing with the PS4 as a base in the future, we could probably use the existing models we have right now for the time being.
Once we start taking on new challenges, we may start narrowing down the number of Digimon, but we’ll be able to explore new playstyles, try out new visual styles, and, with the Digimon Story series, place importance on collecting different kinds of Digimon, and we’ll be doing all that while managing modeling resources yet trying to have as many Digimon as possible, so please look forward to future Digimon games.

4Gamer: We are looking forward to new Digimon games, including Hacker’s Memory. Thank you for your time today!

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Translator's notes

1. Bikkuriman = A Lotte-produced series of snacks that gained popularity for their collectible stickers. The stickers and characters on it then spawned their own spinoff games and even an anime (also produced by Toei Animation, the studio responsible for Digimon anime, and with Digimon staff such as Hiroyuki Kakudou and Yukio Kaizawa at that). [↩]
2. Despite the title, the Digital Monster Ver. S ~Digimon Tamers~ game has no relation to the anime series named Digimon Tamers. [↩]
3. The game known in the West as Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Complete Edition, which includes both Cyber Sleuth and Hacker’s Memory in a single pack, was actually the original form Hacker’s Memory was released in on the PS4 and Vita in Japan (i.e. for Japan, there was never any such thing as a standalone version of Hacker’s Memory). The PS4 and Vita versions of Hacker’s Memory were released as a separate game in the West, and the combined release was only released there in the form of Complete Edition. [↩]
4. The “Butterfly Dream” refers to a parable by Zhuangzi musing about dreaming about a butterfly and waking up, and how it’s impossible to determine whether he is a butterfly dreaming of being a man, or a man dreaming of being a butterfly. [↩]
5. While it was not revealed at the time, the new game referred to is likely Digimon Survive. [↩]
6. Digimon Linkz is out of service at the time of this writing. [↩]