Dragon Quest's 25th Anniversary
by
, 28-05-2011 at 06:08 AM (89616 Views)
Well it's officially been 25 years since the birth of one of the greatest series in history that inspired nearly every current-day aspect of the modern RPG. Square Enix is making a big deal of their accomplishments and releasing the original 3 Dragon Quest games for the Wii's virtual console. Unfortunately, they seem to be doing so only for the Japanese public as nothing has been announced for release to the English population who has it's own fan-base.
Dragon Quest was always super-huge in Japan. Whole businesses and schools would close down on release days and laws were changed so that their whole economy wouldn't shut down because of a new Dragon Quest title. In North America it was a bit slower moving to take such acclaim, but eventually more and more people grew to enjoy the title just as much. No changing of laws though, not that I noticed. Those that love and are ever hungry for anything Dragon Quest in the English speaking world seem to be of a cult following. Thank goodness for emulators and all those crazy Japanese to English hobbyist translators out there huh?
It's true that us English speaking people have not received much love from Enix and now Square Enix lately, Most of the titles that are released in English seem to be scattered amoung various console systems as some kind of trial release, my best guess. Maybe they are just angry at us for having Nintendo give away all their copies to us at the beginning? However, it seems that they have finally formed some kind of strategy, like it or not, These days unless you own a Nintendo DS you won't be playing a new Dragon Quest in the foreseeable future.
Now don't get me wrong, I like the DS. I think it's nifty. Do I like it better than the iPad? ...or my PS3? Or my own home computer? No. At this point I'd even take the whole series on the Wii, which my fiance owns, if it would allow me to be able to play any of the remade versions of the old Dragon Quest in English. Maybe one day they'll open their eyes and realize that they are actually making money outside of Japan with Dragon Quest, more so if they actually release it to the more popular consoles, sorry Nintendo but it's true. Until then, maybe we can hope to be able to play the originals once again in all the Wii's fuzzy Virtual Console low-res glory in English. If we're lucky... *sigh*
Want to do some more reading up on Dragon Quest? Intrigued by some of my factoids?
Dragon Quest on Wikipedia
The official 25th Anniversary Website (Japanese Only)
Follow Announcements on Twitter (Japanese Only)