// KOTAKU — GAMING
Persona 3 Dual Meme Becomes A Reality Following Release Of Unofficial Nintendo DS Demake
The Persona fanbase has a lot of silly inside jokes about the franchise, but one of its favorites is pretending that Persona 3 Dual, a non-existent Nintendo DS port of Atlus’ 2006 RPG Persona 3, is a real game that they’ve all played. Well, I’m not sure if this kills the joke or makes it even funnier, but a team of fans has taken the meme and turned it into a reality, as Persona 3 Dual is now a real game that you can play on Nintendo DS hardware.
The P3D Project team dropped a new trailer for the Nintendo DS demake on June 28 to commemorate the project’s v1.0 release, and it’s pretty clear from the trailer that this isn’t some half-assed copy-and-paste job. While certain assets, like the animated cinematics, have been ported over to keep things faithful, the actual game itself has been remade from the ground up.
In fact, Persona 3 Dual includes a few extras to the original game that even Atlus didn’t add for the 2024 remake, Persona 3 Reload, such as the option to play as a female protagonist. But you don’t need to take my word for it, as the dev team has released the demake for free on its official GitHub page, which includes instructions for getting it to run on official Nintendo DS/DSi/3DS hardware.
For context, the Persona community has been joking about a non-existent Persona 3 Nintendo DS port for, from what I can tell, at least five years. This joke has been going for so long that I couldn’t trace its origins, so the bit might be even older than that. Fans also take the joke very seriously, for some reason, and have resorted to creating fake screenshots from the bogus Nintendo DS version to fool other fans into thinking it actually exists.
Unfortunately, it seems like they might have to retire the bit at this point, but I can’t think of a better reason for having to kill a joke than this.
Don’t miss the latest reviews, news and tips. Sign up for our free newsletter.
A student in modern Japan forced to confront occult happenings, should we call the Velvet Room?
Kazuma Kaneko’s Tsukuyomi, in which the artist appears as a character, will cost $25
The best version of the best Persona game is coming to the system it was always destined for