Atlus has launched a countdown clock. For those paying attention, that’s the second video-game countdown clock launched this week. Capcom launched its own countdown clock earlier this week. Capcom’s clock is counting down to Monday. Apparently, Atlus didn’t want to miss the party. The Atlus countdown clock is also ending on Monday, albeit a few hours after the Capcom one.
The Atlus countdown is set to end at 8 pm in Japan on Monday, February 21. That’s 12 pm CET, 11 am GMT, 6 am EST, and 3 am PST. The countdown can be viewed at the website “soul-hackers.jp” which appears to be a not-so-subtle reference to the Devil Summoner games. The second Devil Summoner game is Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers. The game was originally released in 1997 and was later remade for the 3DS in 2012. Since then, the subseries of Shin Megami Tensei has been quiet. Given the name of the website, it seems obvious that Devil Summoner is getting an announcement in some form on Monday.
In association with the countdown website, Atlus has also launched a “Soul Hackers” Twitter account. The account has been posting cryptic messages in Japanese throughout the day. Here are some of the translated messages posted by the account today, in chronological order.
“Nice to meet you, we are Aion.
Follow this account.
I need your help.”
“Aion predicted the destruction of humankind.
The sequence to avoid destruction will start today at 20:00.
Please observe and cooperate.”
The account also started using the hashtag “SoulHackers” in Japanese and tweeted out a link to a live stream. The live stream is scheduled to take place at the end of the countdown on Monday. To see all of the tweets made by the Soul Hackers account, follow it here. All tweets are in Japanese.
It seems as though countdowns are now a thing again.