Danganronpa Heads to PS4, for People Prejudiced Against PCs and Portables

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc caught everyone by surprise when it debuted a few years ago. Everything seemed stacked against it: A graphical adventure, heavy on puzzle elements, with a trippy Japanese pop art visual style, on PlayStation Vita — itself a port of a Japan-only PSP game. That's basically a perfect storm of obscurity and failure.

And yet, somehow, it did remarkably well — well enough to inspire a sequel (Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair) and a spin-off (Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls). The first two games clocked in with six-figure sales in North America alone, on Vita, and those sales grew modestly once the two adventures made the leap to Steam earlier this year. Unsurprisingly, a second sequel (New Danganronpa V3, not to be mistaken for the anime continuation of the storyline, Danganronpa 3) will appear in Japan early next year and presumably sometime shortly after in the U.S.

Unlike the first three games, however, V3 will not be portable-exclusive at launch: In Japan, at least, it will debut simultaneously on Vita and PlayStation 4. This, perhaps, seems inevitable as PS4 ascends to dominance in all regions and the Vita quietly withers into the sunset of its unjust existence... but given the scarcity of this sort of game on consoles, not necessarily an unwelcome turn of events.

To prepare unsuspecting handheld-haters for the glory of the series (and to catch them up on the increasingly baroque plotline), Spike Chunsoft will be adapting the first two entries in the series to PlayStation 4, and NIS American will be publishing them in the U.S. in January. NIS's press release makes no mention of new content or material for the PS4 reissues, which means loyal Vita fanatics probably won't be missing anything (besides 1080p resolution) by passing on the new version; however, console fans who wouldn't be caught dead with a portable game or playing on PC (surely there are a few out there), should definitely have a look when Danganronpa 1•2 Reload lands on PS4 in the new year.