What Evangelion video games were released in Japan?

Evangelion's game history is almost entirely Japanese. It begins in 1996 with Neon Genesis Evangelion on the Sega Saturn, a digital comic style adventure built around animated footage, and the Girlfriend of Steel adventure game in 1997, which introduced the character Mana Kirishima and later reached PlayStation and PC. These were story products for fans, sold on the strength of new animated material rather than deep game systems.

The best known action entry is Neon Genesis Evangelion for the Nintendo 64, released in 1999, which recreates the Angel battles as one on one fights with the Evangelion scaled against each Angel in turn. The PlayStation 2 era brought the most ambitious title, Neon Genesis Evangelion 2, a Gainax supervised simulation that mixed daily life in Tokyo-3 with the series' hidden backstory, alongside the more conventional adventure and raising simulation games built around Shinji's life at NERV.

Later releases followed the audience to handhelds and phones: Detective Evangelion on PlayStation 2, the Secret of Evangelion adventure, rhythm and mahjong and card titles, and a long tail of mobile games. Towering over the whole category commercially are the pachinko and pachislot machines, which from the mid 2000s became one of the franchise's largest revenue sources in Japan and generated their own elaborate animated sequences.

For game collectors the practical notes are these: Japanese Saturn and PlayStation 2 Evangelion titles are common and inexpensive in Japan, the Nintendo 64 game is the recognised display piece of the line, and spine cards and registration inserts materially affect completeness on the disc formats. Almost everything is Japanese language only, with the story adventures effectively closed to non readers.