Dragon Quest IX for the DS

[Crossblades]

Screenshots
http://www.rpgamer.com/games/dq/dq9/...a121206-1.html

http://www.rpgamer.com/games/dq/dq9/...s121206-1.html

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

Man, Sugiyama has some huge freakin' ears.

[ValiantKnight]

That sucks. I don't have 100 hours to waste on a handheld gaming system I play maybe 5 hours a week(train rides). I certainly don't want to spend months playing this game.

I will not play this when I am at home. I have real video game systems for that.

Curious as to the hate for handheld....
Is it the small screen or controller not a comfortable fit?

I just don't understand the reasoning.. if its not controller size/screen size... if you could hook the DS into a TV and hook a USB controller to it, would you still rather play a console over the handheld even if the handheld had better games?

You'd rather play a boring 0.5/10 game that you hate on a PS3 hooked to a TV, than play a 9.9/10 game you love on a handheld?

Not meaning to flame, not saying bad about PS3, DQ, handhelds, consoles, etc....
Merely asking a general question about handhelds vs consoles.
If its screen size/controller related I could understand some issues, but otherwise I'm curious....

[Jowy]

A brilliant decision if I say so myself.

[ishashobar]

great! now i have one for my Wii and for my DS

[Zeromus_X]

Awesome!

Nothing like portable Dragon Quest...*savors GBC ports of DQI-III*

[Erdrick Holmes]

A brilliant decision if I say so myself.

Hey, as long as the product delivers on it's awesomeness (since it IS Dragon Quest the odds of that happening are high) it can print all the money it wants.

[LazarCotoron]

I actually own a DS, and I only whine about it for action games because the DS gives me the old Blaster Master hand cramp when I play action games with it.

It's interesting that DQIX will take advantage of the DS's bluetooth connectivity, and it sucks that this is America where it probably will NEVER come up. Still... I was shocked when Rocket Slime and DQVIII actually received good reviews out here. I'd have a figured a game known and 'loved' for it's, ah... ancient outdated game mechanics, or 'quirkiness' as some people like to call it, would've been dumped on no matter how much fun it was, silly or not.

I wonder if it will go hearken back to DQIII? I'd like that a lot.

[Timerk]

I still don't think this is going to stick.

[Erdrick Holmes]

I'd have a figured a game known and 'loved' for it's, ah... ancient outdated game mechanics, or 'quirkiness' as some people like to call it, would've been dumped on no matter how much fun it was, silly or not.

That's the thing with DQ games, if it ain't broke don't fix it. We've been using fire and the wheel since the stone-age, why bother using anything else for their perpouses?

[Ashley Schovitz]

Looks like I won't be playing it.

[Crossblades]

http://www.allrpg.com/rpgnews/news_show.php?newsid=2976

The Nintendo DS bound Dragon Quest 9 sure is getting a lot of attention in the last... day. We're here again with updates of what was learned at the 20th anniversary Dragon Quest conference, where there was a playable demo taking place in the first town and field. It turns out that Level 5 has been working on the game for a whole year, and now it's nearly complete.

For those of you who aren't much into cooperative playing, the game CAN be played through as a single player RPG, straight to the end. However, the option to play multiplayer through Wi-Fi is there as well.


Level 5 continues to pleasanty surprise in the area of playable characters. When the characters (designed by Akira Toriyama) change their equipment, you won't have to use your imagination to guess what their armor looks like, as the changes will also take place on the field. The characters will also interact with enemies in the open, as opposed to random encounters. Battles are of course real time; no surprise at this point, coming from Square-Enix.

[JKTrix]

I don't get why people are so dead-set against playing 'serious' games on portables. Oh well.

This post is full of info and opinions from different people. But first:


That's right, 2 cartriges. Not yet confirmed officially by SE, but apparently this image was 'leaked' during the conference. Some places are already declaring it fake, but it would be interesting if this did happen. You could probably use the DS's download feature to transfer the game data from one to the other.

Now for the opinions. While Dragon Quest is not a big deal in the US, several folks in the 'game journalism' business do note how major this is. Most of our game systems--and games themselves--come from Japan, and Square Enix's moves can shape how developers act. After all, they own the 2 biggest non-Nintendo franchises in Japan (Dragon Quest 7 and 8 sold the most games for their respective systems in Japan).

Luke Smith, news editor for 1up.com, addresses this point in his blog.

Square Enix announced a Final Fantasy XII game for the DS, now they've moved Dragon Quest over -- what if their support of Nintendo's handheld becomes the norm for other third party developers? It could certainly throw a monkey wrench into Microsoft and Sony's plans going forward

In Jeremy Parish's blog (also on the 1UP staff), he approaches this from another angle.

DQ is Japan's bellwether, and Square Enix is very conservative about the entire series -- they only put the games where they know money will follow. For the main series to leap backward from PS2 to DS makes official what everyone already sort of knew about the Japanese industry: consoles are dead, long live portables.

The 'consoles are dead' part might sound a little harsh, but it is partly true. The gaming culture as a whole was diminishing in Japan, because people were getting bored with the same old games. This was part of Nintendo's focus with the DS and Wii, but that's an entirely different topic.

Chris Kohler of Wired Magazine (who is also very close friends with Jeremy Parish) made another in-depth post on Wired's gaming blog. Some knew that SE was going to announce a new DQ game, but didn't know which system they would produce it on because it was so early.

Square Enix has traditionally waited to see what the outcome of the console wars would be before committing Dragon Quest to a platform. This is why DQVII and DQVIII arrived so late in the lifecycles of PlayStation 1 and 2, respectively -- because Square Enix didn't start development until they were sure the audience was there.

Further along in his post:

Square Enix stands to rake it in on this. They could spend three years and 30 million dollars making DQIX for PlayStation 3, then barely scrape that money back. Or they could make a killing on DQIX while they wait. You might call this opportunistic; I call it Nintendo's business strategy coming into its own. You might say that this heralds the death of home gaming consoles; I say there's no reason Wii can't do the same thing.

Kohler's post is a good read, if you read only one of these links I posted it should be his.

Like Parish, he's big into the Japanese gaming scene, and maybe a bit of Nintendo fanboy. In a post later in the day, he goes as far to state:

PSP was born on December 12, 2004. On December 12, 2006, it died.

Square-Enix is really throwing some weight behind Nintendo now. They're no longer Sony's exclusive girlfriend, they're supporting everyone now. PlayStation still gets a lot of the big games, there are even a few Xbox 360 games from SE out right now (in Japan). It's great to see them spreading the love around. Dragon Quest 9 is gonna be easy money for them.

[Angi-Kaiser]

Hmmmm.... I can't help but be skeptical about the whole "two cartrige" deal. DS' can't download data from cartriges (as far as I know), and the only way I can see the two working is if you had two DS' (used one to transfer data from DQIX 1 onto DQIX 2 on the second DS).

However, if there are really two cartriges, then that means two major things. A: This opens the way for large PS games to be transfered to the DS (FFVII being one posibility). B: With two cartriges, as well as alot packed into both cartriges, the price would be very high. I wouldn't be suprised if it went over 70 dollars U.S.

[KentaRawr!]

If there truly are two cartridges, perhaps data could be saved to some sort of wireless memory card that interacts with the DS?