Development and Release
Like the other games in the series, Yuji Horii was staffed as the scenario director. Critics praised the colorful designs done by art designer Akira Toriyama of Dragon Ball fame. Koichi Sugiyama composed the music for the game. Dragon Quest VIII was released in Japan on the morning of November 27, 2004 with a celebration at Starbucks in Shibuya, Tokyo, starting at 6:30 am. Horii and Square Enix President Yoichi Wada both made appearances at the event, and several of the first buyers in line received a toy Slime.
From August through October before the game's US release, the "Simon dTOUR Live" Mall Tour featured playable demos at participating malls across the US. These free events gave away Dragon Quest merchandise and also featured live entertainment. A demo disc for Dragon Quest VIII was also released during the fall of 2005 through Shonen Jump magazine. The game was released in North America on November 15, 2005 and shipped with a playable Final Fantasy XII demo disc. Additions and changes to the North American version of Dragon Quest VIII included voice acting, new animations, enhanced music and sound effects, additional spells and attacks, and a new menu interface.
Dragon Quest VIII was the first game in the series to bear the Dragon Quest name (rather than Dragon Warrior) in North America. Dragon Quest's North American name had been changed due to a trademark conflict with the pen-and-paper role-playing game DragonQuest, published by wargame publisher Simulation Publications in the 1980s, until the company's bankruptcy in 1982 and purchase by TSR, Inc., which then published it as an alternate line to Dungeons & Dragons until 1987. In 2003, Square Enix registered the Dragon Quest trademark in the US, making the Dragon Warrior name obsolete. As this installment of the series was the first after 2003 to be released outside of Japan, it was the first to receive the Quest in its title.
Unlike the original Japanese version, the North American and European localizations of the game mark a departure from previous Dragon Quest titles due to the inclusion of voice acting in certain parts of the adventure pertaining to the advancement of the storyline. The game retains the series' tradition of allowing the player to name the lead character, reconciling the two by having the voice acting script skip incidences of the Hero's name, (e.g. the line "Okay, Hero, my boy..." appears on-screen, while the voice acting says, "Okay, my boy...") and occasionally replacing the name with Yangus' nickname for him, "'guv" (as in "governor", pronounced with a Cockney accent). Unlike some earlier games in the series, which were censored during localization for North America, Dragon Quest VIII had no such censorship. The English translation is credited to Plus Alpha Translations and AltJapan. Richard Honeywood, of Square Enix's localization office and famous for his work with Final Fantasy VIII and Chocobo Racing, was the main force behind the game's English localization.
Dragon Quest VIII was released in PAL regions in April 2006 under the title Dragon Quest: The Journey of the Cursed King, dropping the roman numeral. This marked the first time a main game in the series had been released in the PAL region. In an interview with Horii in London, he mentioned that the 2003 merger between Squaresoft and Enix (creating Square Enix) allowed the company to release more games in more localities, with producer Ryutaro Ichimura adding that "European tastes have changed because of the influence of anime and cartoons, so Europeans are more willing to receive this type of artwork."
Read more about this topic: Dragon Quest VIII: Journey Of The Cursed King
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