What went wrong? Why did it fail so hard in America?
>>12478295how'd it fail? this is one of the most common NES carts there is.
>>1247829580s RPG enthusiasts knew better.
>>12478302Yeah, because they were literally giving this shit out for free with Nintendo Power subscriptions to get rid of all the unsold stock.
>>12478310Sure, that's why they shit their pants over final fantasy so hard
>>12478295Biggest problem for me when I 1st played it back in the day? Slime. No one gives a fuck about slime, it's hard to understand why slime is even a threat, why is there slime in the 1st place? If the 1st enemy I fought was like a rat or a goblin I'd be like, "oh yeah, I know why I need to kill this thing." I don't know why I need to kill slime, it's even smiling at me. And why am I using a sword against it? Shouldn't I just pour water on it or something? Then what do you fight next? Slime.
>>12478295No akria toriyama box art
>>12478295I love this game too much.
>>12478295Starting with the original was probably a mistake, as it was a bit too old and crusty (even with the improvements) to take Western eyes away from platformers that were hitting their stride.And yes, Final Fantasy also had the same three-year hurdle to overcome, but seeing the characters actually move in battle simply worked better than having ye olden text spell everything out. And to their credit, Square would then jump straight to FF4 as FF2 to try and catch the same audience at the same time (though it didn't really start paying off until FF3/6 dropped), while Enix America spent years playing catch-up with DW/DQ before packing it in and skipping translating the 16-bit entries entirely.
>>12478295It didn't fail. It sold 500k copies, that's sales BEFORE the Nintendo Power give away
>>12478295It took America too long to realize that they should start marketing these games that were designed to be played by everyone in Japan to everyone instead of the 30 year old D&D comic book guy.
Anons have already said, but here's my take.Dragon Quest 1 just isn't a great game. The series had to organically grow in Japan until it culminated on DQ3, one of their most notable games.However DQ3 wasn't released in America until 1992, that's super late, way after Final Fantasy and after the SNES was already out too.It went from bad to worse in the next generations. Enix left the American market during the fourth generation, and then it came back during the fifth generation with Dragon Quest 7, one of the most outdated looking PS games, with no established fanbase to buy it despite its shortcomings.
>>12478402the Famicom versions were a lot worse actually the US ones had improvements
>>12478414>the Famicom versions were a lot worse actuallyDragon Quest 2 released in January 1987 is a better game than Dragon Warrior 2 released in September 1990. The clock is always ticking release date is extremely important and adding a battery backup does not negate 3.7 years of progress.
>>12478423ha ha no it's not if you ever played the Famicom one>bugs>super long passwords>some of the play balance was kind of bad as well, the US version adjusted some things to be easier and less unfair
>>12478424I only played the Famicom versions and will not engage with remake retards. The US versions were worse because of release date.
>>12478425They are better games objectively>but muh release date! Muh sales!Don't matter
>>12478424A lot of times the Famicom release of a game was the beta version they had to rush out and the US release was the properly finished one after the programmers had more time to work on it.
i will say NES Lode Runner was stupidly outdated by the time it got here, of course it had no changes from the Famicom except the title screen. still a 1984 NROM game.
>>12478425Why are you proudly announcing that your knowledge of the subject is limited and therefore les valuable?
>>12478373>It sold 500k copies, that's sales BEFORE the Nintendo Power give awayBullshit. The wiki person misread the chart. The source cited just showed total sales and gave the release year (1989). Someone misinterpreted as "sold 500k copies in 1989".
>>12478295It's a 1986 game released in 1989. They should have skipped straight to III.
>>12478339me and my uncle used to play slime sword-fighting all the time, he always won though
It came here too late and was beaten to the punch by games that already built off what it laid the foundations for(or at least popularized). It looked like Zelda, but wasn't Zelda, so the kids that hated menus felt ripped off. And the kids who did like menus saw that Final Fantasy had more bang for their buck. This is when games were evolving fast and a few years was a massive difference.They should've started with 3
NES Ghostbusters sucked, don't get me wrong, but even though the game was only 2 years old when they did the port it was still fairly outdated by then.
Great Baseball on the Master System was significantly upgraded for the US because the original Japanese version would have been unacceptably crude by the time it got here.
>>12478554>And the kids who did like menus saw that Final Fantasy had more bang for their buckDW1 came out in US a year before FF1 in fact.
>>12478545>hurr durr I’m gay because I got rapedepic
>>12478580Still to late FF had a customizable party in the first game while it took DQ til 3 to reach that
>>12478584(You)
>>12478586???
bah this is nothing. you should see Hydlide. imagine how the balls they had to peddle an NROM game that was even cruder than the Famicom DQ1.
>>12478589You have brown skin. You say easily disprovable things in order to get negative attention.
I hear that some people complained SMB3 looked outdated when it got here although it was just 2 years old.
>>12478594 (Me)I will accept being wrong with research, but there is no way that FF invented that shit. At best they both came to the same conclusions during development in a year’s time.
If it was such a failure, then why were there three more releases on the NES?
>>12478629Because Enix made mulitiple bad decisions in localization.
>>12478629Dragon Quest's legacy and marketing in international markets basically boils down to Enix/Squeenix prodding it with a stick going "C'mon, be popular already like in Japan."
>>12478581Tbf he could have been gay before getting raped.
>>12478629The games made tons of money in Japan so Enix had cash to burn on US localizations. It wasn't like Square who were penny pinchers throughout the cartridge era since they didn't sell games at the same rate.
>>12478646Wrong, God does not make faggots. Satan does by psychically getting retards to fuck their children.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still glad we did get all of the 8-bit DQ games considering the massive hole in Final Fantasy releases (nothing between 1 and 6 except a horribly butchered localization of 4)
>>12478593One thing I'd have passed on was City Connection, it just isn't a very appealing game to Americans and seemed like a pointless localization.
>>12478657>nothing between 1 and 6 except a horribly butchered localization of 4???FF2 on snes was perfectly fine and was pretty popular when it landed. I played the fuck out of it. No one knew it was "not authentic folded 10,000 times perfect japanes localization" until the emulationnera autists arrived a decade later.
>>12478647Yet Square and Final Fantasy were what won players in the West.
>>12478657The US FF2 was a localization of the "lite" SFC version which was simplified for younger kids and of course it was also extensively censored for NOA content policies.
>>12478679Also need to point out that final fantasy on NES landed summer on 1990.Final fantasy 2 (IV) on SNES was released fall 1991 in north America. It was state of the art and truly felt "next gen" when you compared it the previous years FF game.
>>12478704>Also need to point out that final fantasy on NES landed summer on 1990.also note it was 3 years old by that point
>>12478693>The US FF2 was a localization of the "lite" SFC versionMore like a mix of the original and Easy releases, such as Zeromus still using his normal design instead of the weird centaur crab he became in Easy.
>>12478653He only said his uncle raped him, he's not his uncle's kid. Him getting raped by his dad is completely conjecture at this point though it can be assumed.
>>12478693The censoring they did on the game was fucking evil. Anyway, there's no reason to play that thing anymore over the SFC game with a translation patch.
>>12478713True, but my definition was not so literal. It allows for uncle fucking.
>>12478717idk man. i was 3 years old when FF2 came out here so not old enough to remember it when it was new. i do however remember when i was a teenager reading on the Internet how the US localization sucked and it was censored to be for little kids and stuff and please don't play it.
>>12478709True, but we didnt know that either.FF1 was well received because it was the most authentic 1st edition AD&D game on console up to that point. It included almost the entirety of monster manual 1 which is something even CRPGs (SSI goldbox games) could not do yet. Computer AD&D games felt like short adventure modules while FF NES felt like a whole campaign from level 1 newbie to fighting fucking tiamat. It was so authentic that we knew to unequip the monk/blackbelt meleee weapon at around level 7 or 8 and start using open hand damage, because that is the level monks started getting stronger. You could use "Players handbook" as the game manual. The spells and magic daily memorization limits were copied almost perfectly.
>>12478589>>12478614>I will accept being wrong with researchYou aren't me>but there is no way that FF invented that shitLiterally no one said this. We all know what Wizardry is. DQ 1 wanted to mimic the the party creation in Wizardry, DQ2 was a compromise, while FF1 managed to do it right off the bat >>12478594And stop acting childish
>>12478868Of course I’m not you, I literally typed (me). Did you miss that? Of course you did, you’re a stupid agitprop bot programmed by kikes!
>>12478723You definitely take more liberal stance on uncle fucking than I do.
>>12478915Hecking upvoted.
>>12478764too bad about the CD era turning the franchise into Hot Topic slop
>>12478764they did have NES Ultima III out by then. how did that stack up?
>>12478929Ultima III? That shit just goes on and on and on. Long-ass game is long. FF1 wasn't quite as much of a slog.
>>12478402>Enix left the American market during the fourth generationLeft? The games were published by Nintendo in the US, not Enix.
>>12478429That's cope and you know it
>>12478936I never played it so can't comment.
>>12478958U3 is brutal, trust me.
>>12478947Only the first one was published by Nintendo in America, the rest were done by Enix.
>>12478975The three meanest RPGs on the system to get a US release are U3, Might & Magic, and Pool of Radiance. There are some rather tough Famicom-only ones like the Deep Dungeon series, but those are the top three toughest US ones.
>>12478980Might & Magic is long but it's not that hard once you get past the initial phases of the game and have a solid team.
>>12478978they also published FF1
>>12478980I love American games
>>12478969Ultima III has some cool ideas like how the enemies get harder as your party levels up instead of the usual setup where you encounter harder enemies in different regions of the map so as long as you're low level you'll only ever run into weak enemies, but other stuff like certain events only happening during certain phases of the Moon is painful.
they were working on a US localization of NES FF3 but cancelled it because they ran out of money
>>12478295As some other Anons said, game design and tech (mappers, etc) were evolving extremely quickly, and an 1986 game was basically downright archaic in 1989In 89 you had US releases like Mega Man 2, DuckTales and Ninja Gaiden
>>12479385DQ1 was 86, that was the year when CNROM games dominated. by 89 that was only being used for budget releases.
>>12479385Should note that Ultima III was one of the first Famicom games with a 2 megabit PRG. They were really ambitious back then and wanted to one-up DQ2.
>>12478980Deep Dungeon 1 is the most retardedly piss easy rpg ever made.
How was the DQ fandom back in 1990 here in the west?
>>12478295not having a context key for the overworld is boring and tedious
>>12478339filtered.
>>12478346The NES DW 1-4 box arts where works of art in their own right however.
>>12479058I thought it was because FF4 was already done so they were just going to focus on that instead. We got robbed, FF3 NES was a great game.
>>12479448Pretty small anecdotally.I was so excited for that PSX DQ4 remake. 4 has always been my fav. I never got to play it until the DS release.
>>12479516Perhaps, but Square's decision to forego localizing every game in favor of keeping up with the console audience was what won them the battle for RPG dominance in the West.
>>12480240Yeah I get it. It worked for me. I was none the wiser either. As far as I knew at the time FF2 WAS FF2 not 4.
>>12478346>No akria toriyama box artThis would have been a death sentence for the franchise. No one in the west heard of him and anything with a cartoony childish artstyle was ignored by anyone older than 10. This was especially a thing for 80s kids as they wanted to be 18 not 8. All productes marketed to boys that decade were hypermasculine. Toriyama himself was only accepted in the west a decade later due to hypermasculine DBZ charaxters and the gradual acceptance of anime art style.
Sorry to ask here, but this isn't worth creating a new thread. Is there an english translation patch for the PSX version of DQIV?
>>12481429There's not.The DS/Mobile versions are very similar to the PS version, I don't think fans have much interest in going back to the PS version when they have already played the same game, so the effort is not worth it.
>>12481441Not him but according to Wikipedia, the DS English script is censored, and I wouldn't be surprised if the mobile version was also censored
>>12481445No one is going to translate a whole game just to restore the mentions to alcohol, get over your autism.
>>12481459>alcohol
>>12478321>Game PakGod, did you ever hear anyone use this term ONCE
>>12481445No shit it's an NES game Did they the replace the Toriyama puff puff classic with anything?
>>12481487Yeah, seems to be about that.Two gags with puff puff got removed.
>>12478508Excuse me, you're not allowed to do your own research. This isn't a trusted source. Reverted and warned
>>12481461There are patches that bring up back the party chat for the DS version
>>12478295No half naked chick on the cover
I like the ye ol' English in the NES version>>124815192 has some nice legs on the cover from what I recall
>>12481467>God, did you ever hear anyone use this term ONCEYes?Every manual and all official literature called them game paks. The NES, SNES and N64, and early handhelds (GB and GBA). The DS was the first to called them "Game cards" which carried on to the 3DS, switch and switch 2.
>>12481598third party stuff (cleaning kits, game genie, etc) also called them "game paks".
>>12481441DQ4 for PS was made in the DQ7 engine, which would likely mean having the same oversized text that offers no room for proper-length accuracy in translation.
>>12481598>>12481608No, I mean PEOPLE.
>>12480358>anything with a cartoony childish artstyle was ignored by anyone older than 10I think the existence of Super Mario Bros disproves your theory but I understand your sentiment of the hyper masculine stylistic choice of the time and that toriyamas style doesn't really vibe with the traditional western fantasy style up to that point. Still I think the first dragon quests box art would have been acceptable to western audiences just due to the strength of that illustration>Toriyama himself was only accepted in the west a decade later due to hypermasculine DBZ charaxters and the gradual acceptance of anime art style.Dbz is kino and would have been a success no matter what but what about chrono trigger? That game did just fine with his box art/style
>>12480358> No one in the west heard of him Talk for yourself, American. Had Dragon Quest released in my country in the late 80's / early 90's it would have sold out in weeks based on Toriyama's name alone
>>12482324>Dbz is kino and would have been a success no matter whatI think 1995 was when the first Saban dub of DBZ came out, and it was quickly thrown to 6AM syndication timeslots where only the earliest birds waiting for the school bus would catch it. There wouldn't be any US success until it moved to Cartoon Network's Toonami with a new dub and a much better timeslot.
>>12482324>but what about chrono trigger? That game did just fine with his box art/styleThat was marketed for being made by the Final Fantasy people at Square, especially so soon after "Final Fantasy III" proved popular. The Dragon Quest half (mostly just Toriyama) was a big "So what?" in comparison.
>>12482324Mario was not portrayed as an 8 year child, the way the DQ hero appears in early art. Also mario was definately marketed to young kids, its why for decades everything Nintendo was associated as "the kids/family console". Until a generation of manchildren emerged it was not ok to publicly be a mario fan if you were older than 13. It was like being an adult fan of seasame street. Anyone over 14 was playing double dragon and sports games. When the genesis arrived its early success came as a result of teens wanting to distance themselves from the mario kiddie stuff.
>>12482374Chrone trigger also arrvied early in 5th gen, when anime was appearing more often in games and on tv, and adult anime was gaining popularity among college qged students (akira, ghost in the shell, tank police). Several anime music videos were airing on MTV by the time chrono trigger landed, such as Mathew sweet and KMFDM.https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mlgdJjqFfjgMost of all, Chrono didnt look like an 8 year old boy. He was basically vegita with red hair. DQ hero was so small he was almost a toddler with his baby face.
>>12482402True, but it was still a fairly niche thing among the US until DBZ reached Toonami.
>>12478295It released too late in America and the series didn't have the Toriyama/ Shonen Jump boost in the states. Nintendo learned from their mistakes and pushed the Pokemon anime HARD the next time they tried to inorganically force a Japanese trend on American children.
>>12482327>Talk for yourself, American.That was literally the subject, retard.>Why did it fail so hard in America?
>>12482510The guy he's responding to said "no one heard of him in the west" which is what he's specifically responding toOther parts of the world got Dragon Ball, like actual pre-Z pre-saiyan dragon ball and that had pre-adult kid goku, so I'm not sure how allergic everyone would be to Toriyama's chibi rounder art style. It's not like those countries were outside the cultural zeitgeist of edge the US was exporting
>>12482523Back then, western video game console releases typically had to pass through the American retard filter. If burgers haven't heard of Toriyama, then "the west" hasn't heard of Toriyama and doesn't want him.
>>12478559Ghostbusters was never a good game to begin with, it just got by on concept and license alone.
>>12482528This is what americans actually believe
>>12482539I'm not American and we lost out on lots of games because "America doesn't want them". Video game magazines complained about it all the time back then.
>>12481385but hey, good for you Euros getting this outdated 1985 turd that wasn't even good when it was new
>>12482376idk about Millenials but in '93 you did not want to be past the 7th grade and still be playing Mario, Kirby, and anything else cute.
>>12482539France had short lived dragon ball in 1988 but it didnt do well until the 1995 relaunch aided by DBZ popularity.So i will say it again, kid gogu failed in the west, and chibi DB hero would have failed equally badly in 1989.Even in japan the re-release of DQ 1 and 2 aged up the characters and they now looked more like "future trunks" than the 9 year old blob boy of the 80s. This is the look they have had ever since.
>>12482528>then "the west" hasn't heard of Toriyama and doesn't want him.You were right on video gamesYou're absolutely wrong on this. Burgers think they discovered anime first when it was already popular in other places before the 90s and 00s
>>12482615We are talking about 1989 you fucking cunt. France was the first international exposure of Dragon ball and they didnt get the manga until Glénat began publishing it in 1993. The anime aired briefly on Club Dorothée in 88 but relaunched later. A failed kids cartoon didnt make him a household name, especislly if his name isnt even mentioned in the credits. How would people even know who the creator of this kids show was in 1989? What other exposure would Toriyama possibly have to be "known in the west" at this point?
>>12482615Only America/Canada and Japan were important in the 80s and 90s, Europeans had to give up all their individual currencies and make the Euro because their countries were so pathetic and insignificant.
>>12482609That's a weird way to look at it. You're focusing on Dragon Ball being "not popular" when Dragon Ball Z was, since 1990, and that somehows proves that people didn't know Toriyama?I don't believe one second you lived through any of this btw. Also, had the games released people would have recognized Toriyama's art, reviewers and marketing would have mentionned it's by the maker of Dragon Ball (Z), etc which is exactly what happened when DQ8 released
>>12482662>that somehows proves that people didn't know Toriyama?No, just the ones in America who mostly didn't even know or care he existed for much of the 90s.>had the games released people would have recognized Toriyama's art, reviewers and marketing would have mentionned it's by the maker of Dragon Ball (Z), etc which is exactly what happened when DQ8 releasedMost only saw the free demo for Final Fantasy XII that came with DQ8 as the main selling point. The US was still firmly in the FF camp.
>>12482662>You're focusing on Dragon Ball being "not popular" when Dragon Ball Z was, since 1990, and that somehows proves that people didn't know Toriyama?Jesus Christ.The point was that neither Dragon Ball nor DBZ had any international distribution outside of France and Hong Kong at the time Dragon Quest released internationally, no manga until 1993, and fansubs had a 1-2 year timelag as they were Laserdisc-to-Amiga for subbing and then video capture card-toVHS mail order to anime clubs in universities. I didnt get my early white cassette tape bootleg fansubs of freiza saga until 1996 and those were from chinatown and they used chinese names for every character. There was nothing like this in 1989, anywhere west of HK.Magazines like Animerica that shared early DBZ info with the west did not begin publishing until 1992.I am not saying "regular DB was less popular" I am saying "people not living in Japan had literally no possible exposure to any Toriyama works and never knew the man existed". You are really struggling with this concept. Its not America centric, it was the whole fucking world lacking any form of distribution.>I don't believe one second you lived through any of this btw. I very much did, but I didnt own a fucking time machine. You reek of being an under 30 year old wikipedia kid who sees japanese release dates of games and media and are oblivious to the insanely long propagation time of information in the the pre-www world. It is beyond your comprehension for someone born after 1995, akin to how gen alpha are not being able to imagine a pre-smartphone world.
> Why did it fail so hard in America?Because it came out in late 1989, that's it. That said, I still know some people that played and loved it at the time.
>>12482247I never knew a single person who did. Nintendo was using the term "game pak" as part of the marketing push to not be associated with anything related to the video game crash in the early 80s.>Hope you're ready for some fun game paks!>I thought we were having cartridges.>Oh no, I said "game paks"! That's what I call cartridges.>You call cartridges "game paks"?>Yes! It's a regional dialect.
>>12483071>What region?>Washington state.>Really? I'm from Seattle and I've never heard it before.>Oh, uh... it's a Redmond expression.>I see.
>>12478321So? That doesn't mean it failed.Are you... ACTUALLY underage trash, they gets all its information vicariously through corporate magazines?
