By now you might have heard the news about Dragon Quest 4, 5 and 6 being remade for the DS. Unsurprisingly, the news is being met with joy more than disgust, because unlike with the constant Final Fantasy remakes, two of these three games have yet to see even one western release.
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But with all the celebration comes a sad but true joke that many in the community have made; we probably won’t see these Stateside unless Square can conjure up more Final Fantasy demos. After all the care and attention DQ8 got in its localization, the game sold rather dismally, at least compared to FF12. While RPG fans embraced it, the franchise still doesn’t have the mass appeal that FF has outside of Japan, thus they may not find it worthwhile to get these localized.
Ultimately, our fears may be for naught, as Square still likes to make money, and the DS is a platform on which they can do so. Nevertheless, it will still be interesting to see what happens with these games, since their fate in the lands of PAL and NTSC-u may determine the fate of Dragon Quest as a whole outside of Japan.
So yeah, who else is looking forward to these?
I’m really looking forward to seeing these, as long as they don’t go 3-d just for the sake of 3-d. The DS does several things well, and sadly spifftacular 3-d is not one of them.
That said, DQ4 was my favorite of the lot up until 8, and I’ve heard good things about 5 and 6. I would love to see them in (official) English on the DS.
DQ8 may not have sold the 10 million it did in Japan, but I heard it did sell over a million stateside. With a little work, these games can sell – and if Atlus can afford to take chances left and right with niche games, Square-Enix has no reason not to do the same with these remakes. That’s what I’m hoping anyway :)