Whoa… I’m sure hardcore DQ fans already know about the new titles, but it seems Nintendo is getting the legendary RPG back - and in a big way.
I’m really amazed, at how the Enix crew won’t let the DS 128mb card limit, stop them:
I also like the loligoth character designs for the Wii title:
How the heck do you have multiple cartridges for an RPG? ?? ??? Your save data is on that cartridge! I didn’t think it was even POSSIBLE to hot swap DS carts.
There’s a small amount of flash memory in the DS handheld itself, that Nintendo has generally told developers was off limits for game use. However Dragon Quest is such a massive series in Japan, I’m sure the “Big N” will make an exception for it. 
The DS Opera Browser, I believe, uses a GBA cart for memory storage.
People are declaring the two cart thing a fake though.
[ 04-22-2007, 04:17 AM: Message edited by: Mockingbird ]
the thing with the opera browser, i believe, is that you have to insert cartridges on both slots, and there’s no removing/swapping of cartridges involved either
uhh… oh… that’s cool.
I am sure that I will get American version. >_>
Anyone know the link to the Level 5 public dev notice? I just heard that Nintendo is going to manufacture special DS cards (i.e. above the 128 limit) for DQ9, but there’s nothing like that on the Nintendo side. 
Given that there’s no real limit on card memory size, I’m not surprised to hear about that.
All hail the might that is DQ. Final Fantasy pales in comparison to its glory.
Only in Japan. Could you elaborate why you think DQ is so much better then FF? I’ve only played both games that I could compare (can’t really compare DQ1 to FF3 ); FF1 and DQ1 and at that time I didn’t care much for DQ, but really liked FF.
Bad comparison. Dragon Quest started the Japanese RPG genre. Both Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star built on that, coming out a year later.
The Dragon Quest series – inspired by Wizardry – is the RPG that made the RPG market in Japan. It’s known for innovating concepts and lengthy gameplay while keeping a “Tolkienese” atmosphere. The Final Fantasy series – inspired by Dragon Quest - is more geared towards graphical achievements and plot complexity; since FF7 (arguably FF6) it has also been mixing hard science fiction with classical fantasy. Comparing DQ1 with FF1 is not fair, since DQ2 was released in the same year. Thus FF1 should be linked with DQ2 for argumentative purposes. In that respect, there’s a lot in which DQ2 can be seen as equal or superior. In the same regard, DQ3 in comparison to FF2 (same release year) shows how the DQ series trumped FF in the beginning.
DQ3 is considered to be one of the most influencing console RPG titles of all time: day-night transition, class changing options, sex selection… the list goes on and on. Furthermore the Roto Trilogy (DQ1 thru DQ3) as a whole was a massive over sweeping saga unlike anything before it in Japan: with the arguable exception of Wizardry. When DQ4 was released, the series was clearly king of RPG, and continued its trend of domination… not to mention beginning the twincest craze with Mara and Nara. Rawr! 
It was the SNES era that finally broke the DQ hold to FF. Poor economic decisions and sales that Enix made in the US and Japan, caused them to not release DQ5 in the West. Thus Square’s FF4 (FF2US) was the major Japanese RPG seen in English at the initial system’s life. Another negative was that the general quality of the Celestial Trilogy (DQ4 thru DQ6) was not as captivating as the Roto Trilogy – although DQ5 is considered one of the best in the series – thus it didn’t keep Japanese gamers totally loyal and look to other titles. Enix then went into slow release mode as Squaresoft released title after title. It didn’t help that most of the Enix titles, were garbage and the company was losing their touch in a big way (just compare Actraiser with Actraiser 2).
When DQ7 was released, it was too late for a PS success… and while DQ7 has it’s strengths (like the loooooooooooong gameplay), it more or less just kept to what worked in the earlier titles, was specifically targeted for Japanese gamers – initially it was never intended for US release.
DQ8 has brought the series full circle however. Because Enix and Square were one company at this point, there was no FF in the same time frame as DQ8. Graphically the title is a masterpiece: especially the overworld landscape and town designs. The characters also resonate massive likeability, and the plot works great with the lengthy gameplay without getting boring (a past problem with DQ titles). The US - or rather European - version went well beyond what the Japanese version had and improved things even more. Ultimately DQ8 has few faults and is worthy of being in the top five of all time RPG’s for most Japanese gamers.
From my understanding, Dragon Quest is now being geared as a Nintendo exclusive series, in keeping with the whole new innovation idea – whereas Final Fantasy is being geared towards the more powerful PS3 for graphical and audio envelop pushing. However, given the tremendous sales Nintendo has been doing over Sony with their systems, that could all change.
Damn straight. I enjoyed the original Actraiser a lot of its mix of overworld management and action/platformer stages. Then I played Actraiser 2 and… I didn’t get much into it.
Only the action/platformer stages remained, and they were less accessible (and to a degree, playable) than before. With not having to cater to the people, there was less reason to fight as well.
Aye. Actraiser was huge in Japan too.
I don’t think Square Enix has forgotten the success Actraiser had, so perhaps one day we might see it return. There’s no Populous, and Black & White 2 was rather sucky.
Sure there’s Maxis, but they won’t do anything dark and gritty. An Actraiser 3 is what we need more than ever.
I just hope if the Master does return, his lieutenants will consist of scant clad goddesses and legions of bikini armored angels. Those baby cherubs just don’t cut it for me. 
[ 05-02-2007, 04:07 PM: Message edited by: Nargrakhan ]
I didn’t play Actraiser until a couple years ago, but I must concur. Actraiser was badass. They should make more games like it. The sim sections in between were all really easy, but they were … something – especially at the time, it was incredibly groundbreaking. They also gave you a great impetus to keep moving the story forward. I never even played the second one, but I hear they concentrated far too much on the action (they eliminated what made Actraiser, Actraiser!)
Okay so bad comparison since I only played those two games that were relatively released around the same time. Originally called Dragon Warrior on the NES in the US. After that no more DQ games came out in the states for a while.
Hopefully FF will return back to nintendo (although with a graphic downgrade compared to PS3 versions). Well with development cost so high, I really hope they’re forced to go multi-platform.
