Megaten α



Megaten α (メガテンα, Megaten Arufa) was a cellphone subscription service released by Atlus for NTT Docomo cellphones in Japan.

Profile
For a monthly fee of 315 yen (Approx: $3 US), users had access to a variety of Megami Tensei related content, including games, desktop backgrounds and ringtones. However, individual games on Megaten α often required a separate one-off purchase (usually an additional 315~500 yen). However, these games would be available free with a subscription after a set amount of time after their release. The service was initially operated by Atlus but was later acquired and operated by BBMF in 2004. Games and software released under Web-i used NTT Docomo's i-appli (iアプリ) platform that made use of the programming language.

Megaten α was designed for more modern feature phones, and games and applications available on it required a FOMA 900i cellphone or up to function. This was mainly due to the fact that the older phones ran an older Doja profile that limited what could be developed. Because of the greater power of both the upgraded Doja profile and enhanced hardware capabilties, games available on Megaten α were significantly more complex and could render 3D graphics. Additionally, Megaten α introduced functionality for Mega i-appli (メガiアプリ), which allowed a larger amount of content to be included in games. Mega i-appli was used for larger games that utilised 3D graphics such as Persona 3 Em and Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner: A's TEST Server, and sometimes necessitated the use of an external SD memory card on some phones due to the size of the games.

After BBMF took over Atlus's mobile services, Megaten α was the predominant platform for mobile titles on NTT Docomo devices, while Atlus web-EZ was succeeded by a new mobile service rather simply entitled 'Shin Megami Tensei' and YahooKeitai (Yahooケッタイ) for SoftBank which was a successor for Atlus V-Net. These services often shared titles and were functionally very similar despite using 3 different platforms (i-appli, EZ-appli and s!appli respectively)

Links

 * https://web.archive.org/web/20060526215220/http://www.atlus.co.jp/cs/mobile/megaten.html  (Desktop)
 * http://www.i-atlus.com/index.cgi?uid=NULLGWDOCOMO  (i-mode, expired)