Atelier Series/Trivia


 * Marth Debuted in Smash Bros: Parts of the casts of the first two games made their American debuts in, of all things, Gust's other RPG series Ar tonelico, in a bonus virtual reality level for the two heroines. And with the release of Cross Edge in the States in May 2009, Marie has made her American console debut - completely outside her own franchise or even company.
 * "Marth Syndrome" has now struck the franchise twice; Trinity Universe has been released in the US, and it features characters from Gust, Nippon Ichi and Idea Factory games... including the titular heroine of Atelier Violet. This means that Violet joins Marie in debuting in America in a game not directly produced by her home company. Frothing, possibly rabid gamers armed with carrots have been spotted outside NISA's offices at this point.
 * And, of course, there's the fact that, thanks to bringing Atelier Annie over first, this trope now applies to Liese Randel, the heroine of Atelier Liese.
 * No Export for You: It took eight years for any material of the series to be released in America, and that started with the first Atelier Iris game. To this day, despite a PS2 remake for the first two games and PSP remakes for the Gramnad games (Judie and Violet), none of the first five games in the series have ever shown any sign of being brought over. The Atelier Marie & Elie manga also took over half a decade to cross the Pacific, and with Tokyopop's financial troubles and closure, the last volume was cut from publication. Atelier fans used to have good reason to think that the series was "cursed" in the West, especially for "classic-style" games, but with all the Arland games out and with chances being good that Ayesha will see the light of day over here, that doesn't seem to be the case any longer, though there's still no indication that the original five games will ever be exported.
 * Screwed by the Network: The original games were reportedly brought over to Sony for U.S. release approval several times, and shot down every time because "Americans won't get a 2D game that revolves around Item Crafting". This despite the games selling six-digits in Japan and influencing how the industry approached Item Crafting.
 * And then, when Tokyopop finally decided to bring over the Atelier Marie & Elie manga, first they were going to sell the books online only without any bookstore exposure (a decision later reverted), and then when the company hit financial rocks, guess which series was thrown overboard with only one volume to go?
 * Sequel First: Arguably started with Atelier Iris 1, since we got that game ahead of the first five "proper" Atelier games. This happened much more blatantly with Atelier Annie, however, which serves as a sort of sequel to Atelier Liese; Liese Randel, protagonist of the previous game, makes a major appearance in Annie, and her game not making it to the States necessitates marking some spoilers out of politeness.
 * The Wiki Rule: There are several wiki sites covering the games in the series, but unfortunately No Export for You also means that games that aren't exported to English-language countries doesn't have English-language wikis.
 * This one covers the PSP-version of Atelier Violet.