This is the big ? for me. I was so excited to see the DS announcement this morning thinking about how great it would be to interface with the game this way, like Magical Starsign.

I'm not opposed to the Action idea, but it's gonna have to be hella good to make it a true DQ experience. Of course, I've only played 6.5 of the 8 main games.

If the Action part is only for multiplayer "side-quests" or experience building, then I'm all for that as optional content and will use it frequently.

Would love to have the best of both worlds. But I just can't see them having 2 different combat engines.

Gotta catch 'em all?

I'm a little worried about the action RPG elements. I have enjoyed very few action RPGs as I prefer my RPGs more strategic.

Hopefully it just spices it up a little like oldschool SNES FF battle systems, and not into a hack and slashfest.

This is big news, not so much for Nintendo, but against the PS3. DQ is a huge seller in Japan.

I would have preferred the Wii as well (I prefer games on my projector) but the DS is good too. Thank god it's not on the PS3, that hopefully puts my PS3 purchase squarely into the next decade. I might have had trouble resisting DQ9 and Devil May Cry 4 together.

I'm actually on the opposite and I'm a bigger Dragon Quest fan then every member of this forum COMBINED (and multiplied). Dragon Quest was the last turn-based RPG I was still willing to play so it's very much in my favor to move to my now (and long-standing) favorite genre.

If people are really upset that it's no longer a turn based RPG, try checking out Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey from Mist Walker.. they're both turn-based and Blue Dragon even has Toriyama as character designer. I had to give up on Final Fantasy when they turned it into Dawson's Creek but there was certainly no shortage of games waiting to swoop me up (Tales of Destiny = Love).

I've never played a Dragon Quest game, nor do I really intend to. They're just not my cup of tea... if it's yours, then more power to you.

However, I think this says a lot about the power of the DS from a marketing and acceptance standpoint. I really should pop for one of the DS Lites. It's going to be around a while. :)

I've played all of them save for V and VI. Has there been any more talk about bringing either to GBA, DS, etc?

Has someone mentioned this? Dragon Quest IX to be on 2 cartridges?
http://www.1pstart.com/dragon-quest-...wo-cartridges/
http://www.1pstart.com/wp-content/up...agonquest1.jpg

Is this a photochop? I wouldn't think this kind of pic would be available if the game wasn't going to be out until sometime next year...

Fake, firstly for the obvious reason you pointed out (the game was just announced yesterday), secondly because DS cartridges are a type of flash-memory based technology (right?), they should just be able to make the cartridge as big as it needs to be to hold the game (I could be wrong about this), and thirdly, the only reason they'd need to break any limits on the size would be for full-motion videos, which Dragon Quest isn't about (they shoe-horned it in once in DQVII as a response to the FF games but it was a disaster).

If it's too costly to fit on one DS cart then I could see them putting it on two to cut down on costs.

IN theory, I suppose, 2 cards with less memory on each could be less expensive than 1 card with super/mega/ultra/monster sized memory. what's the limit on memory you can stick on one of those cards, and still have it be normal DS sized?

How would you copy data from cart 1 to cart 2 if that were true?

Yeah, that alone keeps it from being true. Your save data is stored on the cart and there's no way to remove a game while it's playing to load that data into the 2nd one.

Scan with new images - http://gonintendo.com/wp-content/pho..._122_493lo.jpg

Yup, you would need to either be able to save your game to the DS internal memory or they would have to give you a GBA cart to save your game to, then power down and swap carts, to make this happen.

One of the characters in the bottom shot looks like Alena. :)

I guess they could do passwords like the old nes days.

:lol:

God, I hated doing that on the TG-16.

That would be a nightmare, not to mention it would eventually get cracked (maybe that's a good thing).
Can't say I've ever tried to pop a cart out while it is on. Maybe if they had you close the lid, went into standby, switched carts, and came back it is technically possible? The GBA cart is an interesting idea as a persistent store for the game to instead of the DS carts at all.

That looks awesome! Thanks for posting it!

Not that I disagree with the longevity of the portable, but what it says is that
the userbase will support the game. There aren't enough PS3 sold thru to
warrant the expenses the game would take on the system, and apparently they
aren't willing to gamble that there will be prior to release.

I wouldn't go that far. I'll give you a tiny bit of an edge, but you haven't seen the massive yellow slime on top of my PC monitor, or my small collection of DQ figures, or my original cartridge/manual/map Dragon Warrior 4/3/2. My DW4 cartridge is my original as a kid, and I still have the beat-up, tattered monster chart :D

I prefer my RPGs strategic. Requiring thought and planning, strategizing, etc. There's a reason I love Civilization. That kind of gameplay can be addictive and entertaining.

Turn-based RPGs deliver that. FF's SNES-era ATB delivered it as well, so maybe this will work out OK. I just don't want a button masher. Or even a Tales style action battle system.

If I wanted more action in my RPG I'd play Zelda or Kingdom Hearts or something.

I'm glad it will be action-rpg, the turn-based rpgs have gotten really old hat.

It would be weird that it is on two carts. AFAIK there's never been a cart game that had multiple carts, at least nothing semi-mainstream. I don't see that game being more than 1GB, so I don't think it's two carts.

Plus, if it gives them until 2007, that's another 8 months or so to wait and renegotiate lower prices on memory.

It's a matter of preference not a matter of turn-based being a thing of the past. I prefer turn-based rpg's because like GreenMonkey said, they're strategic, you actually have to think about what your next move is going to be. Action RPG's tend to be a button mashing cluster fuck but some people prefer those type of games, I just hope DQIX doesn't end up being one of them. I like the combat engine FFXII uses, it has a combination of action & turn-based elements and I think it would work nicely in DQIX.