The Dracky is round and flighty
Playing mainly through Dragon Quest VIII and I'm liking it a lot. Very pretty, it feels like cel-shading was invented for this game in mind. I always hated how cel-shading made most games look like "Adventures in Duplo-land," but put a decent character artist (artist, not designer) like Toriyama behind the brush and fantastic looking. I hate that casino game with the slime though.
Dragon warrior/quest is kind of an interesting beast from an American perspective. Enix was the owner of the greatest marketing ploy in the history of videogames, giving Dragon Warrior away for free to Nintendo Power users (which was in turn given away for free with NES systems). I mean, everyone who's at least 20 years old has this game PURELY through that promotion. And they played it. And it was hard. But they beat it. And it was a lot of fun.
So what happened after that? I don't know how successful II and III were but I know that I didn't get them. And neither did many others I talk to. When the SNES came out, Final Fantasy had launched its preemptive attack on the system, but DQ V and VI were nowhere to be seen. Of course, Dragon Quest was outselling Final Fantasy every single time in Japan. DQ VII was an underground hit on the playstation, but is it really a compliment when you have both the Japanese market as well as the ultimate nostalgia factor and can only reach cult status with your games?
I mean there are obvious reasons why Dragon Quest failed in the American market. The game, even at iteration VIII, remains unchanged in its conventions. It was never the prettiest game (other than the battle animations, DQ VII kinda looked like clown vomit), and if not FFVII the FFVIII made pretty the standard for the succesful RPG. I guess enix was never able to develop a brand loyalty for the game. Hopefully DQ VIII fixes that.
Dragon warrior/quest is kind of an interesting beast from an American perspective. Enix was the owner of the greatest marketing ploy in the history of videogames, giving Dragon Warrior away for free to Nintendo Power users (which was in turn given away for free with NES systems). I mean, everyone who's at least 20 years old has this game PURELY through that promotion. And they played it. And it was hard. But they beat it. And it was a lot of fun.
So what happened after that? I don't know how successful II and III were but I know that I didn't get them. And neither did many others I talk to. When the SNES came out, Final Fantasy had launched its preemptive attack on the system, but DQ V and VI were nowhere to be seen. Of course, Dragon Quest was outselling Final Fantasy every single time in Japan. DQ VII was an underground hit on the playstation, but is it really a compliment when you have both the Japanese market as well as the ultimate nostalgia factor and can only reach cult status with your games?
I mean there are obvious reasons why Dragon Quest failed in the American market. The game, even at iteration VIII, remains unchanged in its conventions. It was never the prettiest game (other than the battle animations, DQ VII kinda looked like clown vomit), and if not FFVII the FFVIII made pretty the standard for the succesful RPG. I guess enix was never able to develop a brand loyalty for the game. Hopefully DQ VIII fixes that.
posted by hojo at 12:45 PM
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