Retronauts - 590: Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime & Slime Morimori

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Big Stretch! Diamond Feit, Jeremy Parish, and Alex Fraioli squirm their way through Square Enix's forgotten works to remember the Slime Morimori Dragon Quest trilogy (aka Rocket Slime). Art by Greg Melo. Edits by Greg Leahy. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week in Retronauts, the slime shall inherit the earth. I'm your host this week. My name is Diamond Fight, but you can come in metal slime because I like to run away from conflicts. And this week, we're talking about a series near and dear to my heart. It's Dragon Quest, but not Dragon Quest. It is Slime Mori, Mori Dragon Quest. What does that mean? Don't worry, we'll tell you. But first, let's introduce my guests, starting in the great state of North Carolina. Not Ohio. Hi, this is Gurami Parish. The Heal Slime Who Heals Your Soul And also joining me from Japan

But not in Osaka, but a different part of Japan Hi, this is Alex Frioli In the great city of Naguya in Aichi Prefecture Nice Excellent So what are we doing here? Why are we all making little jokes about slimes? Well, because as it turns out That's what we always do, isn't it?

I mean, this is just a normal Sunday Yes. Slime Day? I don't know. Okay. Anyway. Because 20 years ago, the folks at Square Enix gave us a Dragon Quest spin-off, and they called it Slime Morning Morning Dragon Quest. They made a video game all about the slimes, the littlest, gambar-iest little creatures in all of Dragon Quest, and these, they ended up making three games in the series, and then they stopped. What happened? Why did they stop?

we're going to speculate about that because we have zero insider information but I think we can make some educated educated guesses as to what happened so I'd like to start here with asking my guests here first of all obviously I know Alex you are a

longtime Dragon Quest I think we'd say expert professional sure I like that and Jeremy I think you also have a long history of Dragon Quest and I've played some of them but to the both of you I guess we'll start with Alex

because authority, what drew you to this series and the slime morning morning games? Well, Dragon Quest in general I was drawn to as a kid because I think the first game I even played was a JRP, it was Fantasy Star. And then I quickly discovered Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy on the NES.

And it was just something nice about a slow kind of game that I could take my time with. And, you know, as long as you plug away at grinding, you will succeed, kind of a very Japanese mindset, which I really enjoy. And it's, you know, I like your assorted NES classics. Your ninjas guidance, your castlesvania.

They're all great, but I'm not the best at them. I like something I can take slowly, hence RPGs. And then slime Mori Mori came out in America, I think, in 2006. Yes. Around the time I was about to leave to live in Japan. And I picked it up and I played all the way through it. And then I didn't touch it again until 2024. in preparation for this.

And it all just came back. It's like riding a gooey bike. It was fantastic. I had a lot of fun with it. And I'm curious to learn about the games that we didn't get in English. Yes. As it turns out, most of them did not leave Japan or get translated in any way. But we'll get into that.

How about you, Jeremy? Would you like to run down your DQ priors? Well, we set the way back machine to the year of 1989. and I bought the Nintendo Power Hype and my parents bought me Dragon Warrior and I said, oh, this is neat. And then Dragon Warrior II came out here and I said, wait a minute, you have to have like multiple characters

in your party. That sounds too complicated. I don't want to do that. But then I ended up falling in love with JRP's anyway and just RPGs in general and never went back to Dragon Warrior until Dragon Warrior 7. And it was really archaic and boring by comparison to pretty much all the other RPGs on the market at the time, things like Final Fantasy and, you know, not Legend of Dragoon. That one was poop. What are some other ones? I don't know. All those PlayStation RPGs that I've played and now I've forgotten because I'm old and senile.

So I kind of brushed off Dragon Warrior for 15 years. And then, you know, I was at OneUp.com and kind of assigned myself the role of the guy who's going to give a shit about DS when it first came out. And then it turned out DS was not actually a disaster and, in fact, was very successful. So I just kept the momentum going and would cover a lot of import stuff and RPGs and so forth for DS. And I was assigned to cover this game and do an interview with the localizer, Richard Honeywood, at E. E3. And so, or maybe not at E3, maybe it was an event in San Francisco. I can't remember. But in any case, I was like, dang, this is really fun and exuberant. And I remember the moment that I became interested in Dragon Quest, not Warrior again. And it was when I saved the game in Dragon, in Rocket Slime, and all the little slimes did a dance to the save theme. And I said, this is amazing. There's like this entire world. And I recognized. this kind of iconography from the games that I've touched on in the past, but there's like a real sense of fun about this, and the localization is hilarious, and it's just very amusing and very

well made, so I need to become excited about Dragon Quest. And I did. I devoted myself to the series from that point on. So we have the little slime dance to think for me stumping for Dragon Quest in the media for many years and being extremely annoying about it. Wow, slimes. They're anything they can't do. Well, win most fights, I guess. But they won Jeremy's heart. That's what's more important here. They won the emotional battle. Right. They sent their legions of slimes into my body and attacked my heart until I exploded and became defeated by Dragon Quest. So, I suppose we should, moodymoly, dragon quest in Japan. So, I suppose we should go ahead with the... So this series is called Slime Monty Moody Dragon Quest in Japan. And, well, I think listeners can understand what slime means and what Dragon Quest means. There's a word there that's

not even English. Mori, Mori. Alex, maybe you and I should handle this. What is Mori Mori? How would you explain Mori to a foreign type person? Now, you're going to be tempted to think it's forest forest. This is fallen. Yeah, that's what I thought. I was like, wow, it's the dragon. It's the slime forest, but there's, there's like so much forest that it's forest forest forest. That's not true? Yeah. I mean, it's easy to be misled because, I mean, there are at least two forest areas in the game. So, you know, you wouldn't be, uh, wouldn't be wrong for thinking so. No, it's, uh, I'm, I'm cheating. I'm diamond. I'm looking at your notes energetically or vigorously, which I actually did not know previously. Well, I think it's, it's one of those words that

comes to a lot in Japanese and, you know, it has a lot of applications. Uh, you can also describe, like, if you've got a lot of something, you could sort of say moody-mori in that situation. But because you have a lot of things and because it could also mean like energetic and And lively, I feel like they put these two together. Okay, well, it's a game with a lot of slimes. And you know what? These slimes, they got spunk. They got moxie.

They got attitude. And that's our game name. Okay. So if you're timid and you meet someone with Mori-Mori, will you experience doki-doki? Oh, boy. That's, you know, that could happen. I mean, Jeremy, you said, you said they attacked your heart. There you go, doki-dokey.

They did, yes. It was like I was a giant tank, an enemy tank. and they destroyed me. But yeah, obviously the localization team decided that Morty Morty wouldn't fly in the States. So when we got one of these games, only one, they called it Dragon Quest Heroes Rocket Slime. And I think that's a pretty good title because this slime, you know, he's got gumption. He's got that get up and go. He's a mover.

He's a shaker. So Rocket Slime, why not? Yeah, let me just add real quick. I like that they put the new slime, this new slime design front and center, because it's not the same as the traditional Toriyama slimes that we had seen up to this. It's like, he's got that energy. He's got that vigor. You can see it all over his giant bulbous face on the cover.

I love it. He would attack for at least two hit points. Yes. So we can thank one person more than any other person for this game. And that is a man named Yoshiki Watabe. And he is a producer. He joined the Enix company, Enix. In 1999, his first game credit was Planet Lyca on the PS1, which is an RPG, go-figure.

And in the years it followed, Enix became Square Enix, and he started working on Dragon Quest 5 for the PS2 and Dragon Quest 8 for the PS2. And years later, after the Moni-Mori games, he worked on 9, Dragon Quest 9 on the DS, which, Jeremy, I know you're a big fan number 9. I am. So much that they actually changed. Revolution No. 9 by the Beatles to be about Dragon Quest 9 at my request. Thank you, sir. Absolutely. We also had credits on other spin-off titles, but this guy had his hands all over

Dragon Quest and spinoff games and a couple other Squaredex games. You know, one of those producer types, he's like just, you know, he's got his fingers and everything. And according to an interview, because once, again, once that second game came out, he started doing press in the West. And so we have some interviews with people from about 2006. So he told IGN, quote, Back when we planned Dragon Quest 1 for the Game Boy, I sat down with Horty, that's UJ.

Horty, and we wanted to make a game aimed at children. And we thought of a game with the main character aimed at children. So they thought, what would be great for the kids? Well, the kids, I guess they love slime. And I think that goes for all kids in all countries, certainly Americans. We were all kids in America in the 1980s, so we know the slime was like the hip thing, you know? Everyone loves slime. I mean, all right-minded humans, really.

if you don't love a Dragon Quest slime what are you even doing? Why are you here? Yeah, especially the 80s, you could not walk down the street without being offered to slime. It was pretty great. So at first they thought, okay, well, we'll make a game, we'll make like an adventure game

and we'll have the slime, like, do adventure game stuff. So as he told RPG Aamer, or perhaps R.P. Gamer, I don't know I had read that out loud, but what thought we said, at first we tried having him hold a sword and shield. and actually made a test version of it. When they looked at it, when the tat down looked at it,

they actually played it. They said, this isn't a slime game. This is like a blue link. So that didn't work. We don't need a blue link. We need a slime. No, we need the essence of slime. Blue link is great in Four Swords.

You need a blue link. Yeah. But this is not that. We had blue link. And don't forget the blue little lobster shirt in Windwaker. That's super adorable. That's my favorite. Yeah.

And actually, you know, we have. eventually kind of came around to Wind Waker with the third rocket slime game, but we'll talk about that later. Yeah, actually, and if you think, a Breath of the Wild actually gives us a Blue Link to be like the main character. So, yeah, Blue Link is in. Blue Link's hip these days, but. Yeah, they could have been way ahead of the curve, but no, they were cowards. It's a shame. They passed. They said, Blue Link, no, we want slime. And now they've paid the price for their lack of vision.

What they put together was eventually dubbed Slime Morty-Wody Dragon Quest. Shugeki No Shippodan, which I would describe as, I would translate as impact of the tails gang. Shippodan is like a tail and then Don is like a group or a gathering. So that's what they end up calling it. It came out in 2003 on the Game Boy Advance, only in Japan, I'm sorry. And what was their concept? Their concept was, you are going to play a slime and you're living in a village of slimes.

Everyone around you, you're all slimes. And you're a little guy. the default name is Slardin But of course It's a kid's game So you can rename the character To be whatever you want It's fine

Yes, slurin is I think chronically first appeared In DQ 5 I think that was the name Of the slime that you get In DQ5 At least in the Japanese version Yes, some of the interviews

indicated that a lot of these early titles Have references to other Dragon Quest games That simply missed me by Because I've only played A select number of Dragon Quest games And not any of the ones they referenced Like the ones he worked on So

Yeah, they didn't localize that slime in Dragon Quest 5DS as Rocket, so it just totally, yeah, just totally passed us by. It's like, oh, you know, all those weird localization choices they made with the original Final Fantasy that then, you know, we didn't get all the jokes and references in Final Fantasy 9 because they localized it correctly, but, you know, ditched the jokes, so, yeah. But the concept here is that you've got all these slimes, they're all living together, and notably there's no people in this world. You got slimes, and you got lots of their Dragon Quest monsters, but there's no heroes, there's no, there's no, there's no, these guys, no low toes, if you will. They're just not there. And what I explained this, he said, it's like a parallel universe that's only inhabited by slimes. That's sort of the concept, because if humans did appear, they'd probably run around killing the slimes. So we can't have any people here. This is for a gentler, a kinder, a kinder, gentler world for the slimes with no people in it. And that's fine. And these slimes, they're loving it. They're living it up. They got little houses. They got little, um, they got little, um,

books, they got shelves, they got everything. Yeah. The idea of like, I was just going to say the idea of some dude walking into your village and slaughtering you and all your family for like 20 gold pieces is really, it's way too dark for this game. So I'm glad that I'm glad that they just, you know, said, nope, no humans. Yeah. It really felt to me like in line with the whole a DQ game designed for kids, it felt like all

the adults are away. This is, it's, it's just the Muppet babies. There's no adults in this world. Maybe Nanny pops by every now and then, but they're just left to their own devices and they're having fun. I was going to say Peanuts, gang, but yeah, like, you know, that works. Now, actually, now I'm having visions of like Dragon Quest protagonists instead of being silent, they actually talk like Charlie Brown's teacher. But thou must. Yeah, goo grief?

Okay. And don't forget their beloved puppy, goopie. Oh, God. Goodstock, no. See, I'm not good at this. I'm not good at this. Goop. Goop stock.

There it is. Goop stock. Nailed it. But this world is not all rainbows and sunshunds, but this world is not all rainbows and sunshines, unfortunately, because what happens at the start of the game is that the slime village is attacked by the eponymous tails gang, mostly the creature that we know as the platypunk, those little squat guys with the tails on it. And the concept here, I love this concept, it's hilarious, and they stick with it, I think, through every game. They're called

the tails gang, so every monster in the game has a little platypus, a platypunct tail on it. And the more tails you have, the more you are in charge of things. So like, when you eventually meet the boss of the gang, it's like a plato punk who has like nine big tails. And he's like, you know, he's sitting in a big chair. He's like the boss. Like that's, that's the idea. But even when you fight other things like, like the killer machines or the little bats, they've all got little tails strapped on their on their little butts. So it's just, it's funny. It's a visually impressive, you know, gag. They keep it keep it up. I love it. I love little tails and everything. So Miles Taylor would join this gang immediately as a

lieutenant, not an ensign. Yeah, that's right. He'd have, he'd have a leg up there. But he would have to take orders from someone who had at least three tails. Does he count... Does spinning the tails give him an advantage? Well, I don't know. Stu's not here. I'm sorry. Stu would...

Stu would know they ask these questions. He would direct you to his fan fiction that explained all of it. So the tails gang come in. They rough up the place. They break all the stuff. They kidnap all the slimes, except for one, our hero, Soledadine. And it's up to him to bring them all back. So the basic cuts of the game is, you're going to go on a quest.

you're going to go explore this, I think you're like an island somewhere, and you've got a world map screen, you're going to a little different levels, you're exploring the levels, you're going to rescue your fellow slimes, bring them back to your village, and then you're also going to repair your village by exploring those worlds and getting materials and fighting other monsters and occasionally fighting bosses, and that's the concept. You just, you meet other slimes, you rescue them, you get stuff, you collect them. You can also collect your enemies, and they sort of join you in your village, and they become, like your friends and they can help out with things, which is kind of a cute little, like, Dragon Ball feature where it's like, you know, once you're, you know, once you fought, and now you're all good, you're all good friends together. But perhaps we are not so different, you and I, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Except that I have more tails. That's true. You really don't see any slimes. Are there any slimes that have tails by default? I know there's the one that has the tentacles, but I guess a tentacle is not a tail. That's different. I don't know. I think A tale implies some sort of skeletal structure, and as we know, slimes are boneless fury.

Kind of like a McNugget, but... Yeah, yes, a playable McNugget. Yeah, exactly. Oh, man, you know, if McDonald's in Japan never made a Dragon Quest nugget, they really missed out. That should be easy. The only thing they could make a McNugget more appetizing would be for it to be blue. See, you kid, but they have absolutely made slime. Meek buns. They've totally made slime meat buns.

I mean, McNuggets are made of pink slime, so I guess they're just, you know, one tier higher than the standard slime. I also, yeah, let's not forget that I think officially, Squarery Nix have announced that slimes are, like, the taste of the slime is sweet

lime. Diamond, I don't know if you remember when the Dragon Quest gum came out years ago, but they had a blue slime gum, and it tasted like sweet lime, and it was not awful, but I still felt guilty. Wait, in the Dragon Quest canon, do the heroes eat the slams or do just fight them?

I don't. I think they just fight them. I think it's, I don't know. It's like in Final Fantasy. You never see anybody eating Chokebo, even though in the back of our minds, we're all like, that's got to be pretty good, right? There's a lot of stuff that just kind of happens, you know, in passing and you just kind of take it for granted. Like, you never see anyone use the toilet in these RPGs.

But you know, at some point, they're out there exploring, they're quaffing potions. They've got to go at some point. So you know what's happening. So it's just implicit. So yes, the protagonists are definitely eating the slimes. They are probably doing like a solid snake or sorry, naked snake and just tasting everything they kill to say, oh, I like this. Oh, terrible.

Slime eater. Yeah. I'm going to assume that, you know, some of the monsters taste pretty terrible. Like, what does a golem taste like? Probably, like, sand. So don't try that one. It's just no bullion, I bet. Just biting into a cube.

A cube of bullion. I mean, there is, there are the gold golems, so the goldmen. So they probably taste like gold bullion. All right. Whoever has eaten one, please write in. So how does this game work? I would describe it as sort of a very light Zelda-like experience because you've got a top-down perspective. And you're moving your little slime around this.

screen. And if you remember, the Game Boy Advance only really has the two buttons. I mean, never mind the shoulder buttons, but there's two main buttons you got there, the B and the A button. And most of it's the A button. So what do you do? Well, you can move around. You can press the button. You can jump. You can hold the button while jumping and he kind of like glide a little bit. It's so cute. The slime sort of goes flat like a disc and he floats slower to the ground, which is very adorable. There's a lot of Mr. Fantastic in Slaren or Slaren, whatever his name is. Yes, because when he means business, when it's time to fight, what he does is he does, you can hold down the button, and you can stretch, you can stretch him in eight directions, and he sort of becomes elongated, and if you hold that direction and let it go, you will fly off that direction and often ricochet off different surfaces, and in Japanese they call it a slime strike, I believe the English version they called it Elasto Blast. Yeah.

But in other case, that's like your primary means of attack. You will knock into enemies. You can also knock down objects and just breakable walls and anything you hit you can catch and your slime can actually carry them like on his back. It just sort of like floats on his back as he bobs up and down. And you can hold up to three things or monsters at any one time. And that's where the L&R buttons come in because you can sort of cycle through them on your head. And the B button just throws whatever is on the bottom of the pile. So you can just throw it.

And of course, you can pick up things and throw them in. other things, you can pick up bombs and blow up, like, soft walls, and this is the key to the collecting mechanic, because you're going around, you're hitting things, you're collecting them, and then you're throwing them. Because rather than go all the way back to town, every level in this game, every level in this game has some sort of either a mine cart or a boat or some kind of like a trolley that's just running through the stage perpetually, and you throw stuff on it, and it goes off the screen and disappears, and magically, it goes back to your village.

Don't ask how. It doesn't matter. A wizard did it. Oh, the well-constructed rail system did it. It's a very civilized society. I mean, this is a game from Japan. So, like, I think there's just the understanding that, oh, I see rail tracks. Everything is working correctly.

It's just going to, you know, function. Because when you live in Japan, you can take that for granted, unlike here in America. It's also cute that the trolleys do pose a mild threat in that if you do stand on the tracks and get hit, you will become flattened. It also flattened other monsters, and every monster has their own little sprite for being flattened, which is just, again, this game is so, in case you get the feeling here, folks, this game is adorable to look at. The sounds are funny. It's a really fun game that was aimed at young kids, but you know what? We're all kids. We've all got a kid inside us somewhere, you know, metaphorically, not physically. Unless this is like the dark half by Stephen King, in which case, there is a semi-digested identical twin living inside of us. Influencing our actions Making us evil Sorry, sorry,

basically. You go into an area, you freeze some slimes, you collect your resources, you defeat other monsters, capture them if you can, and every once a while you have to fight a boss monster who, of course, is larger than the monsters. Sometimes the bosses are based on other dragon quests. Like, I know the first game definitely has a, a golem-type guy who you have to, like, crush with a strime strike, but other bosses and later in games get a lot more creative. But that's the basic loop. You go through that, you get more stuff, you go back to the village, you can expand the village. You can fix broken houses. Somehow this gets you access to more slimes, gets you access to more areas. And eventually, you know, you finish the game and everyone's

happy. That's the story of the original slime morning with Dragon Quest, which, as we said, was never released, never localized. It was just a game in Japan. And apparently it's sold pretty well because someone, someone in Squaring it says, yes, you know what? That game was good. I'll have another please. Yeah, one of the things that I like about the original slime Mori Mori Dragon Quest, and really this carries over to all of them, is that, you know, at the beginning, as you said, the Tales Gang wipes out your town, like just smashes it up, kidnaps all the slimes. And your, your task then is to rebuild your village and rescue all of your slime friends and family. And that's always a great mechanic. Like, I think the first time I really encountered that was with Soulblazer for Super NES, which was published by Inix, you know, it's all in the family. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you had to like go through. through and defeat monsters, and then that would release the souls of creatures and people and furniture. It was a very animistic kind of game.

And that would rebuild the villages, and then that would unlock new opportunities as they gave you hints or items or open passages for you. And this really captures that. And also, at the same time, if I'm not mistaken in the first game, you're collecting objects to send back to town and convert into cash, which you're. you then use to rebuild the city? Is that right? Yeah, there are things you need to, there are things, there is money in the game, and there are things you need to spend money on, but also certain slimes, and I think even monsters, too, will ask you for objects and they'll

use that to, like, make stuff or rebuild stuff. So it's not quite a, it's not quite a crafting mechanic, but it's like, oh, I need this and this, can you get this for me? But either way, you're collecting a lot of stuff as you play. When you're constantly collecting things, you always want to be collecting, ABC. Yeah, and that taps into the, the village rebuilding, the town rebuilding from Mega Man Legends, which is a great little element of that game. Because I don't know, there's just something very satisfying about rebuilding and knowing that your work is going into something constructive without actually having to go full Minecraft, Fortnite, and actually build it yourself. Just like, hey, I'm doing

the hard work. You guys fix it for me. That's my entire approach to home maintenance is like, I pay someone and they make my home right again, and I don't have to deal with it. It's just like, hey, the thing is happening and it's very satisfying. What I'm saying is I'm not a handyman, but I am good at slime strikes. Yeah, I was getting a, I mean, I haven't played the original because I don't, I'm a big fan of the main series and I don't play too many of the spinoffs. I jumped on rocket slime because I really needed a fix because I don't think. It was well after eight, and I think we were waiting for news about nine. And I'm like, yeah, I'll play a Dragon Quest.

But, like, listening to you describe the first one, knowing it doesn't have the tank battles, it sounds like a crucial part of the game that just isn't there. It's like, what do you mean Sonic doesn't have a spin dash in this one? What are you talking about? It just sounds like something very important is missing. Yeah, they didn't know it was missing because they didn't think it up yet. Exactly. But yeah, what I like about the town building thing is,

That how they visualize it is that as part of the attack, the Tales Gang just launched a lot of, just a lot of junk and crap all over the town. Like this giant sort of like cartoon like, you know, heavy balls with spikes on them. And they, you know, and they even have a weight like written on the side, like you know how heavy they are. And the idea is that as you get more and more slimes back in your town, you have enough slime like manpower, slime power to pick up the heavy objects and throw them the hell out. and then you can start rebuilding that part of the town. So it's sort of this, you know, easy to understand visual of, oh, this part is blocked, this part is blocked. I need more slimes to move this. And then we can build a new church or billiards hall or whatever the hell the slimes are doing.

So, I mean, yeah, if I were a slime, I mean, the Elastoblast fits billiards, I think, very well is all I wanted to say. Yeah, I believe the clutter that's blocking up the town is weighed in or measured in slime tons. and each slime can lift one slime ton per slime. Hence the name slime ton. There's no scaling according to their class or type. Like a blue slime can lift as much as a king slime. That's just how it is. So you need to find that number of slimes, rescue that number of slimes and return them to your village, repatriate them to clear that specific blockade in your town. So it's a very, it's kind of a very linear sort of game in terms of progression, even though you can wander around within the stages kind of freely, but kind of structured very puzzle-like

and there is a certain progressive flow to it. And that's all well and good. But I will say kind of going back to what Alex said about the lack of tank battles, I've never finished the Game Boy Advance rocket slime or slime Mori-Mori because it does feel like it's just missing a certain pizzazz, I guess. Like it feels very samey throughout. Like, you're always kind of skipping around, blasting around, throwing things back onto mind carts, and, you know, some of the challenges get a little more complex, but never really. Like, this is a very kid-oriented game. And it just never quite delivers a thing that where you're like, oh, yeah, this is it. This is the thing.

Like, the entire sandbox is pretty much presented to you in the first 15 minutes of play. And it never really grows or evolves. It's just kind of continuing to go through that play loop for six hours or however long, and then you're done. And, you know, again, as you said, Diamond, they just hadn't come up with that idea yet. They hadn't come up with the thing. But it does make the GBA game a little samey and repetitive. It just kind of misses a little bit of spark, even though it is super adorable, charming sprite art, really good play feel. like they nailed the physics and the mechanics right away.

It just needs a little something to put it over the edge. And what that was turned out to be a second screen. Yes. The solution to so many of our elves. Because the second game, which is called Dysen Shatoshipodam, which I would say the Great Tank and the Tales Gang, comes out for DS. It comes out in December 2005 in Japan. We would get it the following September, as I said, called Dragon Quest Heroes Rocket Slime. And Watabe cited the success of Dragon Quest 8 overseas as convincing the higher-ups at Square Enix to actually go ahead and localize the sequel for this game.

because the first one never came out, but the sequel was like, okay, we'll go for it. And as he said it, he told Nintendo Power in 2006, I'm trying to get new kids to enjoy the same feel of the Dragon Quest world. I hope American kids will, from this game, learn about Dragon Quest world, and come to enjoy the Dragon Quest series. And it worked on this kid. I was admittedly a 30-year-old kid at the time, but nevertheless, it still worked on me. Yeah, that's actually something I want to touch on, because I looked it up. Watabe is basically my age so you think he's

deep down he's probably like living the life because he was a kid in the 80s when Dragon Quest came out and then you know end of the century fresh face college kid he gets a job at Enix and pretty soon he's making Dragon Quest games and all of a sudden he's made his own

kind of Dragon Quest game so in part this was probably a very special opportunity for him because like oh the more kids who play my game in other countries, the more likely those kids might also like Dragon Quest like when I was a kid. And this, you know, he's paying it forward in a way by making a Dragon Quest game that's fun for kids that hopefully will get them to try the big Dragon Quest games, which in this case

of 8 was indeed very, very large, a very large game. Yeah, I feel like Square Inix localized this specifically as part of the, you know, an attempt to build up hype for Dragon Quest 8, which was, you know, that was a big deal for them. They also stuck. a Final Fantasy 12 demo in with the release of Dragon Quest 8 on PlayStation 2 in Japan. I can't remember they did that here. But, you know, there was the sense that, hey, like, this is a big deal. So, yeah, I think they really wanted Dragon Quest to be a success in America, finally. And there was a blitz of like five years where we got a lot of Dragon Quest stuff before they tapered off again.

And now we're back in the like, hey, let's localize everything. It's just cyclical. I don't know. I don't know. It's weird. Now, correct if I'm wrong, but wasn't Dragon Quest 8 the first game to actually be called Dragon Quest outside of Japan? I think so?

Well, unless you count this, slime, you know, Dragon Quest Rocket Slime, Dragon Quest Hero's Rocket Slam, I believe, I want to say, yeah, this came out before Dragon Quest 8 in the U.S. So this actually had the Dragon Quest branding on it. Oh, I think it came first, because I remember playing eight my last year of college. And I was definitely, yeah, I was in Japan by September 2006. Oh, maybe I skipped Dragon Quest 8 because I was like, ah, Dragon Quest. Ah, it's 120 hours. Ah, my roommate's playing it.

That's fine. I'm not reviewing it. So, okay, maybe I'm mistaken. Whichever one debuted first, this is definitely part of the era where Square Enix has recaptured the Dragon Quest name for themselves. And I feel like that was definitely part of their push. Like, oh, we got our name. We got our name back.

Let's push this thing. We got Dragon Quest and everything. Let's go. You know, Japan loves it. You'll love it too. Come on. Dragon Quest time. It was very rewarding, I guess, to see it, like, get a second life outside of Japan.

I was so excited at the time. And I'm still excited. You know, Dragon Quest is not dead yet. But it was also nice to see that they gave a lot of attention and care to proper localization and sort of redoing the spells and abilities in particular from eight onwards were all redone to sort of be more in line with the automatopoe of the Japanese versions and that carried over into rocket slime like it had all the puns it had the great care given to the translation localization which was great and gave

me a lot of hope for future games so this game they made this game and I guess the core the core of the game is actually very similar to the first game, because it's the same story. You're a slime in a village of slimes, and the Tails Gang comes, and they attack your village, they kidnap all the slimes, they bash your village to pieces, and you're going to go around, you're going to be jumping, slime striking, collecting stuff, like, that's all the same. But here's what's different. What's different is you got an Nintendo DS, and Nintendo DS has two screens. As what Tabby said, when we decided to make a DS version of a sequel, we thought that we would make

use of the dual screen. So there's a focus on dual screen action. And they mean action, because guess what? They decided this game needed tanks. Tanks. Tanks. When I think of slimes, I definitely think of large, tracked military weapons and vehicles. War is gel. I said it. So, yes, after a few early missions, suddenly your little hero gets access to a think, like a whistle, kind of like a, like, almost like a power ranger style whistle to summon, to summon his big tank, and then you get a tank, and the tank is basically a giant slime with, like, castle towers around it. It's a very, again, it's very cute. And suddenly you will be locked in combat with another vehicle of a similar size. Uh, your vehicle is

officially called the Schleiman tank, which apparently is a pun on Sherman Tank. Apparently. And that's what's going to happen. Like, in between the, the, the slime tank, you know, striking and the collective things, you're going to be fighting people in tank battles. And how this works is you got your two screens, right? So on one screen, you see the entire battlefield, and the other screen you actually see your slime, and you are basically exploring your tank like it's a little level all its own. And all your tanks basically have like two cannons, one cannon shoots up at an angle, and one cannon shoots straight ahead at the other enemy tank. and your ammo comes out of these shoots

and you have to grab the ammo again by striking it and then throwing it into the cannon and then you're going to shoot ammo at the other side they're going to shoot ammo at you if two projectiles collide in midair usually they'll just destroy each other some exceptions like there's a shield that's a very good defense that will actually block more than one

I think there's a sword that will like cut through one projectile and keep going but then it'll be like lesser but it'll still do some damage like there's lots of variables but basically it sort of turns it's like a deck builder game because you're going to make your own tank's sort of ammo collection based out of what you find in the world and then you sort of set it in the tank as these are my projectiles and the game will sort of give them to you at random

based on what you've put in there. So if you put, you know, if you put all bombs in your, you know, deck, quote unquote, then it'll just give you all bombs. But if you put like 29 bombs and one sword, well, you'll get mostly bombs, but every once a while, you'll get a sword. And the longer you play, the better stuff you get, and the better your tank can fight the other tanks. I don't know if this makes sense in audio, but... Yeah, no, I think you explained it pretty well. It's also worth noting that you can throw other

characters into the cannons and fire them at the enemy tank. And the enemy tank is also a sort of mini dungeon. And you can launch yourself over there, and at some point you have to go over there. And that's what the upper screen is for. It shows the two tanks facing off against each other, but it also shows icons of all the items that are flying back and forth. So you can kind of see like, oh, there's a thing coming. So I need to go to that cannon and toss something to counter it. And also you can say, oh, they're sending over a dude. I have to go and stop that dude from wrecking my tank because each tank has a core, like I mentioned a heart.

and you win the battle by destroying that heart. So that's ultimately the goal is to mess up the enemy's tank heart before they mess up yours. And when you say tanks, like, they're not, you know, it's not like G.I. Joe Mobat or something. It's not just like, you know, a green armored thing. Every one of them is themed and different depending on the types of enemies you face. And at some point, you do fight a tree. And they did localize its name as Krono-Twigger. And that was the moment at which I realized, like, Dragon Quest is my series.

I didn't realize it before, but it's true. Oh, yeah. Now I'm curious, though, because the graphic in game, it's the same, like, see, it's the clock. It's that font that's used in Chrono Trigger. What was the Japanese name of that tank, I wonder? It wasn't anything to do with Chrono Trigger. I remember. I looked it up.

So they made up a unique graphic just for that thing's name. That's great. Yeah, they localized the hell out of this game. That's incredible. They went all in. And again, that was Richard Honeywood. It was the lead localization editor on this. And he just, he knocked it out of the park.

Yeah. Just puns everywhere. Surprisingly, he didn't say war was it goof for, but, you know, he still, I can't fault him. Like, his and his team's work were spectacular, immaculate. Yeah, well, I mean, okay, Real quick, while we're on the topic of the puns, I have my top three right here. And they are the king slimes that you can find in the game in order of appearance. Earl Luminum, Duke Swellington, and count calories.

Just absolutely flawless. Yeah, yeah, your village of 100 slimes, every single slime has their own name. And every time you rescue a slime, they send you a thing. thank you letter. So those are all custom. Those are all unique letters, too. So there's a huge amount of text in this game for children. And they, it's really impressive. I mean, in fairness, there was a huge amount of text in Dragon Quest 1 for children. You know? Very true. One thing that is funny, though, that obviously, I don't think they can possibly come across a localization, but if you play the Japanese version, all the, like, all the slimes you talk to, and indeed,

a lot of the monsters talk to because the monsters also talk to you when they, you know, they threaten you. Everyone sort of has a different, like, sound to end their sentences. And, like, that's the thing that works in Japanese that I don't think you can really do in English very well. Like, for example,

if you meet a sphinx guy, all his sentences will just end in a nks sound. You know, like, uh, Kurosunx, like, he'll just put it on there. Like, it just, it doesn't mean anything. It just reminds you that, oh, he's a sphinx. So he talks with an ink sound. It's like, it's just funny.

So I appreciate the extra effort they must have gone into to give all these characters and monsters personalities because they, you know, you can't localize inks. It doesn't work. No. I've tried. So I want to talk some more about the tank battles because I think it's really hard to convey just without going into a lot of depth how well designed that entire concept is. because it's not just like, you know, it's not like Skies of Arcadia or something where it's pretty much like a turn-based battle between two vehicles and you choose like, well, on this turn, I'm going to defend. Okay, on this next turn, I'm going to use a magic spell. It is fully integrated action RPG and there is a lot of freedom in how you go about these battles. I mean, for one thing, I don't think you can choose who staffs the tank that you control, but, like you said, Diamond, you can kind of affect the loadout of weapons by collecting really great stuff, you know, weights and bombs and rocks and, you know, explosives and things like

that in the world and then saying, okay, this is going to be my loadout when I go into battle. But there is a certain level of automation and the team on your tank will kind of slowly on their own load stuff into the cannons, but they don't really make good choices and they're very pokey about it. So it's good for you to kind of be there and manage, but you don't have to do that. You can immediately launch yourself over to the enemy tank and just start wrecking the shit out of it. And you'll be inside. And there is kind of the balance, the question, like, do I trust my team and my load out enough that I think that they can hold off the enemy tank without, you know, letting our tank get exploded to death while I'm over there just wrecking the interior of their

tank, or do I need to be back on, you know, my own tank, kind of managing everything and choosing the order of the load out. And, you know, the further you get into the game, the more you have to really think about the sequence of attacks and really micromanage everything. But you do have the freedom to just kind of say, all right, you got this. I'm going to go trash the enemy tank and see what I can do. And you have to fight enemies and smash through gates and things like that. And, you know, they're going to be fighting me the whole time. And there are multiple ways to lose a tank battle. Like if your tank just gets its health taken all the way down and they blow it up, that's one way. But also, if you as rocket lose, if you die in combat, well, that's, you know,

that's effectively the same as your team losing. Like, they may carry on without you, but you're dead so you don't know. So, so there's a lot of factors. to juggle, and it adds a really surprising amount of complexity for a game that is oriented for children, but it's in such a way that it's very, very intuitive. Like, you start playing, and it can seem a little overwhelming at first, but once you kind of move through these easy battles at the beginning, it just becomes really, like, it's very logical, and it's very manageable, and there's a really good kind of difficulty curve and scaling. And there are some tough fights, especially toward the end. But it forces you to juggle a lot of things. But there's, it's all just so intuitive

and so well designed. And, you know, there's just enough information on the, the second screen that it really gives you everything you need. It's extraordinarily well designed. Like, it is a truly, truly great and extremely unique mode of a video game. And it really is kind of the standout of, of Rockets Line. Because the dungeon stuff, is fine. It's like, you know, Zelda babies pretty much. It's really, really simplified dungeon exploration. And the puzzles get about as complex as like, oh, I need to stand on a platform while holding the objects denoted in a statue opposite the platform. So I have to go find these objects and put them in that sequence and then stand on this platform. It's not complicated. But then

you get into the tank battles and it's like, whoa, there's some meat here. This is great. And they They really, you know, in the ninja guide-in days, it was like, oh, I got to get through this level so I can see the cutscenes. But now you're like, oh, I got to get through the level so I can fight chrono-twigger. Yeah, the crew aspect is very interesting because, yes, you can staff your tank with up to three helpers. And those helpers can be other slimes from your village. They can also be monsters. If you capture enough monsters, they will join you in the tank if you want them to. And your AI partners, they are essentially operating on their own volition, but you can give them sort of general commands.

Like you can tell them, hey, I want you to feed ammo into the tank, or hey, I want you to attack the enemy, or hey, I want you to defend our tank's heart. So you can give them sort of general instructions, but yeah, they are basically the game is sort of playing it by itself. I do know that one of them, the little technical guy, his favorite thing to do is he likes to attack the enemy, like, so he will launch himself. into the cannon and just try to attack the enemy over and over again, unless you tell them to stop doing that. Yeah. But, yeah, absolutely. That, to me, is, that's my secret strategy in this game.

If you get your character inside the enemy tank, their tank is like your tank. They have, you know, in order to fire, they have to feed ammo into their cannons. So if you're there just creating havoc and fighting them off, they'll never get a shot off, and you'll win by default because your friends will just pummel them from afar. So it's not cheating because it's not easy.

You've got to really work at it, but if you pull that off, you're, you know, you're basically invincible. And it must say, while you can get defeated, if you defeat the enemies in their tank, they will respawn. So you have to keep, you can't, you can't rest. You have to keep going. But you can, like, smash up their machines, which will apparently slow the flow of ammo somehow. I don't know how that works, but. Yeah, you can, you can, um, you can stun their guys. And also your guys can be stunned.

Um, and they don't die, but they will be taken out of action for a while. It's really, yeah, you're the load-bearing character in combat. It's kind of the Shin-Magame-Tensei rule set where if the hero dies, well, that's it. That's the most important person in the universe. But yeah, like I said, there are a lot of strategies and tactics. And everyone, I think, probably has a different approach how they like to go about the battles. And, you know, you have to change up your tactics because you face enemies with different capabilities, with a different, like, internal layout for their machine, with different loadouts.

with different creatures inside, and they all behave differently, and they all present different threats. So you have to really think about what you're doing and, you know, do your best to kind of counter that. And, you know, if you shoot one of your dudes over at the enemy tank and something hits them in midair on that second screen, they'll be knocked briefly out of action. But like you said, that same strategy of like shooting a shield and then a guy works just as well, because the shield will block the counterattack and then free your guy to go over there and, you know, raise hell. It's, yeah, it's so good. I can't, I can't really just get across in, in podcast form how much I love this mode of this game, because it's just, it's such a great surprise.

And we haven't talked about the developer of this, have we? Have you, have you mentioned the naughty word, Tose? I didn't say it aloud, but yes, all, all three of these games are credited to Tose as far as developers go. So, yes, it is a tose jam. Tose has a bad reputation from, you know, among, among Westerners, I think, because they are responsible for a lot of sort of infamously bad Famicom games that people discovered through emulation and then series like, my videos in Cronenda have been like, well, this is a Tose game.

How terrible. But the thing about Tosei is that when Tosei is given good direction, and probably given enough of a budget and schedule that they can really stretch. They come up with good stuff. And when they work, what's that? Stretch. Oh, Well done.

Very well done. It was an accident. That's just how much the slime is part of my soul. Like I said, they really blew up my heart. Yeah. So when Tosea has given everything they need to make a good game, they can make good games, and when they work for certain publishers, they almost always deliver the goods. Like, when they work for Square Inix, it's going to be a good game. When they work for Nintendo and

create stuff like Super Princess Peach, it's going to be really enjoyable. It's just when they work for certain other publishers who are like, here is five bucks, and you have a week to turn this game around, do it. Yeah, it's going to be garbage, but that's true of anyone. So this is one of the series that I really think showcases the potential. and the skill that Tosei has. And of course, you know, you had, sorry, what was his name, Watabe? Watabe. Yeah. And, you know, his team at Square Inix clearly leading this production and coming up with a lot of the ideas. But, you know, the execution is a big part of it. And yeah, I just feel like a lot of credit goes to Tose for really delivering with these games and working really well with Square Inix to, to, you know, to, you know, realize their concepts and make them work. I don't know if you both have seen the research that Kate Willard's done lately on the origins of Donkey Kong.

Yes. And I've not. Unerthing that interview with Ikegami and their designers. But it's a really great kind of revelatory look at how Donkey Kong was created and how, you know, Shigeramiomoto had a lot of ideas for it. but Ikegami, you know, who's doing the programming on it, had to kind of take his notes and say, how is this going to be fun? And, you know, basically, like, Miyamoto gave them designs for a single level. And they said, well, this isn't going to be enough to make a great game.

Let's create additional levels. And let's figure out, you know, how the jump mechanics work. And let's figure out, you know, a lot of the moment-to-moments of Donkey Kong that are so iconic. become such integral parts of the Mario character were created by the programmers at Ikegami just trying to figure out how to make Miyamoto's notes and ideas into an actual finished product. And I feel like this is probably one of those cases where, you know, the developers had some great ideas, uh, the designers at Square Inix, but, you know, it really, they really relied on Tose to, um, to execute on those. And there was probably a lot of back and forth. Square

Nix always takes its time with Dragon Quest games, especially the core games, the numbered games. But I feel like they always put a lot of thought into games. So they probably had a lot of collaborative back and forth with Tosei to say, okay, well, what if we did this, you know, and maybe this doesn't quite work right, but what if we change this? So, yeah, I guess this is me saying, Tosei, they're okay. Yeah, because Tosei already had a pretty long history with making other Dragon Quest spin-off games, because I believe they, yeah, they were.

behind the Dragon Quest Monsters series, which is still going to this day. There was a new one that just came out. Yeah. I don't think they did the Walk game. No, they didn't do the walk game, though, someone else. But still, Square Nix, obviously, they had the idea for a new idea. It's, okay, they had new spinoff. And I think they went, okay, well, Tosei, you already did the Monsters game.

Let's try this concept. And it's other monsters, but they're different monsters. They're slimes. I want to say that this was branded as Dragon Quest Heroes. Is that right? Yeah, Dragon Quest Heroes, Rocket Slime, in English. And there have been a few other Heroes games, but aren't they like Muso games? Yeah, those are the Muso games.

I think there's two of those. Yeah. Okay. I'd rather see some more Rocket Slime games as opposed to Muso, but what can you do? The market demands just killing things by the thousand, as opposed to bespoke artisanal killing of things with the slime. The way it ought to be done. Exactly. Yeah, I had one thing to kick in real quick about the tank battle.

I there are more than a few of those that I finished with my tank at zero HP because that's you know like you said that's not the end of the fight it's when that heart gets hit is when it's over and at the beginning of the game you can there's a few fights where you can just go in not fire a single shot elastoblasto blast you weigh through all the doors and hit the heart and then I think after that there are doors that are like okay no this door will only open once the tanks HP is zero and that kind of because I you know I was trying to be cute I'm just I'm going to do my own thing. Let's see if I can win without firing anything. And you can do that a few times. And then afterwards, the game's like, no, you actually, you have to play the game now. Yeah, what's cool with the tanks is every tank has its own interior design. So once you try to get, once you go into the tank and you try to get to the heart, you're going to end up going through a series of like tunnels and passageways.

And there might be traps or there might be like dead ends. And you have to figure out how to get to the heart, which is really interesting. which actually plays in the multiplayer mode because this game has multiplayer so you can fight with your friends and in multiplayer mode you're allowed to choose any tank that you've experienced

in the one player single player campaign so I think Watabe had a story where he's saying that when he plays multiplayer mode he has a tank that his favorite which is the Schwartzman tank which is like a black version of the regular slime tank because he says the interior design

is more defensive and he thinks it's a better tank for his purposes but yeah So, again, just one more level of, like, how much thought went to these game, every tank has their own layout, which is just fascinating. Yeah. And I did really enjoy, like, mixing and matching the crew, because you can choose any three of the monsters that you have. And, you know, it's nice to try to, you know, depending on who you're fighting, play with what your crew is to see what kind of attack works best. Do you have people focusing on the lower cannon or the upper cannon or kicking folks out or invading the other space?

and I don't know, I just, I really like that. I like that aspect of it a lot. Yeah, because some of your enemy, some of the enemy tanks, if they're staffed by, like, magic users, they can just teleport into your tank. Like the little, I don't know the, I don't know the monsters, I'm sorry, but like the little guys with the hats and like the, like the lollipop stick wizard guys and the ghosts, those ghosts, like, they can just appear.

And then you're like, it's really hard to get rid of them. It's actually quite challenging because the ghost can become like ethereal. So you can only strike them when they're about to strike you and they turn solid for a second. Like, that's your window. It's hard. I'm not I'm not going to be. I'm not

No. No. I don't know. No. No. No. No. No.

Thank you. But, Jeremy, you said it. This was a great game, and it obviously sold well enough to make another game. So we wanted more tank battles. And Square Nix said, okay, we hear you want more, but we're going to try something a little different. And first of all, we're going to try it on 3DS. So five years later, five years later, in 2011, they come up with slime one and one Dragon Quest three,

Dai Kaisuku and Shippodan, which I would describe as the Great Pirate and the Tales Gang. Is that actually, that might be Old Kaisuku? I don't know if it's all or die, but still, you got pirates, you get tails. Guess what? It's not tanks. It's boats.

You're on a boat. It's the real as it gets. So, yeah, the series, three games, each game on a new platform, obviously it's a, again, very similar format, although they've changed some things now. They finally decided, okay, okay, Enough of the kidnapping.

Instead, the Tales Gang comes to your village, and they steal your magic orbs. You've got seven rainbow orbs. They steal the orbs, and they go all over the world to hide them. And your mission now is to sail around the world and get back all the orbs. So the first two games were fairly linear in that you had like a map screen and you pick different levels and you go around. This new game, because you're in a boat, you basically have the entire world to explore. And indeed, the world map, kind of like, I think, Dragon Quest 3, right? Dragon Quest 3 has a world map, which is very similar to our actual planet, right?

Yes, it does, yeah. DQ3 is my favorite. But what kind of, sorry, what really bugs me here, what really gets me is seven, there's seven orbs. Look, I'm a traditional guy. There's six orbs. I will defend this. Not just in DQ3, but in DQ11, which is referencing DQ3, they have the six

Orbs. Why did they go at seven? Is it a seven seas thing? I don't get it. That could draw more. Just they needed an extra area? You both could be right. Maybe it's Dragon Ball, maybe it's seven Cs. Oh, right. But with that concept, though, it's essentially a kind of a small open world style game because you're just going around the ocean. You have to go to different, you have to go to different areas, and then you find stages you can explore. But while you're selling around, you can be attacked by random boats that are coming on the ocean. There are weather patterns. there are storms, there are like secret bosses that sort of hide out in the ocean and can find you

by surprise and chase you down. There's a lot out there. And it's kind of a, so it's kind of a really big expansion on what made the first game, or what made the second game, a big departure from the first game. And they said, okay, we're doing even more. So they really, again, this is not a, they took their time with this and they produced a game that I thought, for me, this is one of my favorite games of 3DS. It is really fun, and you can play it for like a hundred hours.

You can put so much time into this game. Yeah, like I said, this is where it kind of came full circle with Blue Link, because this game is very much Dragon Quest doing Wind Waker. It's like it's not, the ocean is not as expansive and empty as in Wind Waker, which is a good thing. But it just does have that feel to it where you're like out in the ocean and a lot of stuff is happening. You can spend a lot of time there. And, you know, I feel like this was kind of a thing for a while. like Etrine Odyssey 3 also did this where it was like, hey, now you're, you know, doing a dungeon crawl in the ocean and you're mapping the ocean. People were really kind of into the idea of boating for a while.

Everyone got rich off their royalties body yacht. It was like, this is it. I'm bringing this home. I don't actually think that's what happened. So, Jeremy, you brought Winwicker. That's a good point because with this game, you can customize your boat in the, In the second game, in the tank game, your tank is your tank. You can customize your crew.

You can customize your ammo, but your tank doesn't really change. It is always your tank. In this game, you can customize your boat with different parts, just like in the first... Like in Kingdom Hearts. This is the gummy ship, except you are the gummy. No, no, I'm blanking. Phantom Hourglass.

Phantom Hourglass. When you're selling your boat around, you can customize your boat with different parts. you can do that in this game too and different parts and different strengths they can increase your offensive power increase your defensive power

also what I think is very important is that in this game because you're out at sea you can't it's harder to get into the enemy boat because you can't just

go across on the ocean you have to either shoot yourself over there or once you knock their HP out like a rope appears and then you can

sort of climb across on a rope but otherwise you can't leave your boat and just go over there it won't work You can only launch yourself in and get yourself in via the air, whereas the tank battles, it was always an option to just walk outside and walk into the tank and mess up the place. So it's actually a little bit more challenging. And believe me, by the late game of this game, it is in fact very challenging.

There is like a, it's like a boss rush secret tunnel somewhere. It's just all boats. Like you fight boat after boat to boat to boat. And the last boat, I never beat it. It's like a boat that's like all like super swords. It's kind of impossible. I couldn't get past it. So I beat the main story, but I never, I did not heart percent this game because I couldn't.

It was too hard, this children's game. I mean, they make kids tough these days. They're, you know, trained on TikTok, very hardened. Also, because 3DS is a little bit more advanced than DS, this game supports Wi-Fi. So I remember I used to go to McDonald's here in Japan, and you could connect to a special, like, Square Innix's like storefront, and you could download special boat parts from time to time. And, of course, you can use the Wi-Fi to play people over the line. You can battle people over the, you know, the Internet. And with StreetPass, you can basically collect the data on someone else's ship

and fight their ship in sort of a, you know, a-circuitous multiplayer battle. So, like, again, they're using the whole, you know, much like the Native Americans supposedly used all the Buffalo. The Square Enix is using every part of the 3DS here. They're doing everything they possibly can to get the most fun out of this little game machine. And I think it would have worked. If they hadn't launched on November 2nd, 2011, one day before Super Mario 3D land. I'm not joking.

One day before Nintendo dropped the big 3DS game that everybody cared about. Square Nix said, hey, remember this game? And I remembered it. I bought it on day launch, but not a lot of the people did. I'm sorry. And that guy's only got one tail. But his brother has a tail, too. It's true.

Where's the justice? Yeah, so that is a, I'd forgotten about the timing there. Yeah. I think also this game never saw localization because at this point, Square Inix had pretty much given up on localizing Dragon Quest for a while. I mean, we're still getting four, five, six, and nine around then, right? Somewhere through the middle of the DS cycle, I think they realized, like, we don't want to deal with this anymore.

so they offloaded it to Nintendo. And I know for a fact that we would have not have gotten Dragon Quest 6 and Monsters 2, Joker, or whatever, or Monsters Joker 2, if not for the fact that Nintendo localized them. Like, that was just the reality of it. And for whatever reason, Nintendo decided

to stop localizing these games for a while. And they didn't pick this one up. There were a few others that they didn't pick up. And it really seemed for like, there was like a five-year gap in there where it really seemed like we weren't going to get anything. And the only thing that did come was one of those Muso games, actually, for PlayStation 4. So Nintendo was totally noped out.

And that was on the Square Inix side. I guess they were like, well, maybe the PlayStation 4 library or the audience will be hungry for the prospect of cutely destroying thousands of identical creatures in a Muso game because everyone loves those. But that's really pretty much all we got. So this kind of just fell into that dead zone. And it's a shame because I imported it and did some import coverage of it for OneUp.com back before that also was left to die. Actually, no, it was just killed.

And it's a damn good game. Wow, yeah, I was thinking, because it all runs together to me. Like the whole run of DQ, 4, 5, 6, and 9 on the DS was like, yeah, those all came out in the span of a year. It was many years. I completely forgot there. Yeah, there was that dead spell when the 3DS was out until, yeah, there was some DQ monsters. And let's not forget, DQ 11 eventually on the 3DS. But yeah, I'd like to go back and play this eventually.

Yeah, Dragon Quest 11 didn't come to 3DS in America. It was only in Japan. Yeah. So that's a big bummer. But, yeah, there were, you know, even with the localizations of the DS games, there was a big gap between five and six, and it was just, I think, even Nintendo, I think, was getting kind of cold feet in saying, is this worth doing? And it did finally come, but, yeah, I can't remember where the, where, like, I'm getting the information that, that Square Inix was like, no, we're not doing this. And if Nintendo

doesn't do it, it's not happening. But I don't know, maybe that was like something that someone at Square Inx told me that I wasn't supposed to share. I don't remember. Parity. Parity. Satire. Satire. Yes, parody. That's what it was. Parity. Well, actually, Jeremy, I think you're really right there because the timing, if my memory serves me, I think Square was going all in on Dragon Quest 10, the MMO for the Wii, which launched, I believe, in 2012, right? It was a late Wii release. Something like that. Yeah. And that, of course, has never been localized in any form. Into English. Right. I mean, yeah.

There are, I want to say there's localizations in Asia into other Asian languages, but not into Western languages. They might have dabbled with the offline version, like, because they eventually made a Dragon Quest 10 offline version, which is like on other platforms. That one might be localized into some, yeah, into some mainland stuff, but certainly not English. And the Wii version was only, yeah, the Wii version was only in Japan and it was actually region-locked to Japan. You couldn't even play from overseas. No, I did play DQ10 for a couple of years. Mostly because I was doing a daily podcast at the time called 10 in 10, which was just recording recordings of me playing DQ 10 for 10 minutes a day and talking about it. And yeah, it was great.

If you guys ever do a DQ 10 episode, I'm down for that because I had fun with that game. It captures a lot of the DQ spirit, even though it's an MMO. Yeah, we'll get to 10 eventually, but I'm still waiting on John Ricardy to live up to his promise. to do a Dragon Quest 3 podcast with me. So once we can make that happen, we can continue moving through Dragon Quest history. Because we did one and two when a long time ago at your, at your, sorry, not bar, your rental shop. No, renting is also illegal in Japan. Oh, your place that just happens to have a lot of video games.

Okay. Used game store. Got it, got it. Sorry, my bad. I, you can say bar. I'm not trying to get in trouble with the authorities. Unless someone from NOJ is listening. I think it's fine. Okay. Well, I know they love retronauts over at Nintendo NCL. They're just always, like, you know, that's why they don't let you inside the building because the speakers are just reverberating with retronauts at all hours. But, yeah, as we sort of implied here, the game just, the game came out,

and it was kind of poorly timed. It was, it came out right before the 3DS was super popular, but too close to becoming super popular, so it kind of got lost in the shuffle there. According to online sales data, they only sold 150,000 copies of the 3DS game, which was easily the smallest amount of all three of these games. You know, the first one was a big hit for Game Boy Advance. The second one was early DS games, so it sold well because all the DS games sold well early. But this new 3DS game just didn't sell very well. And also, kind of important, in 2011, Watabe left Square Inix.

He went off for greener pastures at DNA. his only credit on that game is under special thanks so it sounds like he wasn't even involved in the development although we don't know maybe he was involved and then he left and said okay then you get a special thanks and we don't mention you anymore i don't know but either way the series seems to have dried up you know that was 2011 we have not heard any mention of any further releases this game is ever imported to any of the service you know none of the none of these games ever imported or appeared in any kind of you know um virtual console you know there was a lot There were a lot of GBA games that got some virtual console play here on the Wii U service.

Not that one. So the series appears to have vanished, which is kind of tragic, because it is, I would say it's, you know, you're not supposed to do a, you're not supposed to put an adjective on unique, but it's like a very unique game series that I want more of, you know? It is wholly unique. Yeah. I think that's an appropriate adverb for unique. Um, especially that last game, because the last game, once they decided to have the sort of, you know, the world angle,

every, instead of having stages that were just like generic, oh, you're in the forest stage, you're in the desert stage, you're in the ice stage. Each stage was themed around countries, you know, in our world. And there was a whole stage set in America, which had a bunch of cowboys in it. At the end, you fight the Statue of Liberty. And I swear to you, it is an awesome, hilarious, hilarious fight. I mean, pure comedy. Comedy gold. Love it. And, of course, the last battles in Japan, because why not? And it's all temples and stuff. It's beautiful. Cherry trees. I do need to play more of this game. It would be nice if, you know, it had been localized or even if there were a fan translation of either of these unlocalized games. But to my knowledge, neither has been fan translated yet, which is surprising because I feel like anything Dragon Quest gets fan translated. There's like retranslations of games. There's, You know, Caravan Hearts for Game Boy Advanced. One of the Rogue Likes has a fan translation, but I was not able this morning or last night to find a slime Mori-Mori localization fan translation.

I believe the first GBA game has something, but I think the third game is still a work in progress. Like, you can find links to things that people say English translation packs, but I don't think anything is actually finished. Okay. But clearly there are people out there who are, at least. trying to get this working. Well, I need to find this, uh, these localizations.

Okay, I clearly, I wasn't looking hard enough. Maybe I should just stop sticking with my favorite sites and try using Google. I didn't think it worked anymore, but here we are. A group calling themselves Team Rocket successfully released a translation patch for the third entry in the series. So actually, the third one apparently has been localized, but the first Hasn't Aon Genesis started working on it? Oh, we totally forgot to mention the fact that the bad guys in this, the, you know, the Shippodon, they localized it as the plob, the platypus mob, and everyone has like a, you know, kind of a mafioso sort of attitude and way of speaking.

And the boss is even called Don something or another. I can't remember. But yes, the plob. God, the localization's so good. Yeah, the boss smokes cigars. Yeah. Maybe that's why they never brought the third one over. Yeah.

That fell out of fashion. It looks like the first, the guy who's done the first game's localization is just machine translation without proper editing. So maybe don't do that one. I streamed a little bit of DQ10 using an on-the-fly machine translation, and it was good for comedy and little else. Yeah, I think as our affection for the second game shows, like, this is a series that is clearly written with a lot of love and fun at its heart. And if you don't transmit that in your translation and localization, you're just, you're ripping out half the fun of the game. Like, the tank battles are fun.

They are. Like, no question about that. But if you're not putting the same amount of attention into those as you are, you know, all the little letters and dialogue and, you know, the little instructions that happen, like, you're missing out. It's very much a series that it gets itself. There's just, there's DQ gags everywhere. There's a really good, there's a boss fight where you can throw Wyvern wings at the boss.

And if you've played DQ, you know that if you try to use those indoors, you just hit your head on the ceiling and you can't leave, and you use that to damage the boss. You can use that to make him hit the ceiling and like, that's great. And the game's full of that stuff. I'd love to play the third one if it's got the same kind of vibe. I think it's a lot of fun. There's no roof on the ocean, but yeah, this probably works. Oh, that's true.

Okay, take them below decks, cover him in wings. I don't care. You know, there's sea caves and things like that. Biting beneath the coral. That'd be all spiky and sharp. That's sharp, yeah. But yeah, with no more games And no word of any more games

I think it's up to us We've got the time We've got our own imaginations And we have absolutely no money or authority What do we want? What do we want in a Dragon Quest Slime Morty Morty Morty part four? No one's going to make it

So let's just pitch it What do we want? We did tanks We did boats The third one gave you boats The third one gave you boats Obviously the next step is the airship so it's aerial battles you know kind of take it to that skies of arcadia thing but way

oh is there a sid slime can we have like a slime sid uh what the the doctor the platypus doctor is dr sid oh yes yeah of course it's right there oh it's right there yeah i i like the tank thing i want to see more the i want to see the tanks i want to see a fourth game that's a little more complex, a little more thinking required for a tank battle. But, I mean, for me, I also really appreciated the town building aspect. I wouldn't mind seeing more of that,

more emphasis on building up a castle town, what I refer to as gooey koden, amassing just a bunch of pals and rebuilding a place. And as you get more characters, you get more shops and stuff, and I really like that. I'm partial. I'm a sui koda and speed runner.

Not to toot my own horn, but there it is. How fast can you get to 108? My record is just under five hours. Wow. So you can actually do the timed battle thing with Clive and Sukkidun 2 or whatever it is. No, I've not run two. I only do one. Okay.

Oh, I see. I see. Yeah. And yeah, I needed something to do over the pandemic. So I'm like, I'll learn that. And I did. And I'm happy to announce that I'm ranked six out of six people. but ranked is ranked

Yeah It's true I'm not on the list I will never go back to it Because the only way to To make my time better Is to learn awful Frame perfect

RNG manipulation Which I'm not doing Until the next pandemic Code put you indoors Like okay Well I've got a hundred eight friends Right here on my PlayStation Yes

But yeah I want a game Where I have to collect 108 slimes And form some sort of Omni slime And then that's the tank. Yeah, do that. Well, I think if we've got, you know, you vote for more tanks.

Jeremy says airships, maybe the only real answer is, like every franchise that seems to front of course, you go to outer space. You get slimes in space. I'd be into that. Outer space battles. And if you leave the ship, you're sucked in the vacuum and you're never seen again. The plob is moving into the only frontier that's unsettled by capitalism. The Donne wants his own moon. That I could actually see.

That's, that actually seems like something that would be kind of in line with the vibe of this series. Yeah. If the third game on 3DS had a version of our world, then a space version could have a version of our solar system and each planet could be a different level and you're flying from planet to planet in a rocket ship. And, you know, there are the rocket ships that you're facing. while in mid-flight, and, of course, it all ends on Uranus. Oh, wow. Sorry. Launch the probe.

I couldn't resist. Okay, so the Uranus part aside, I do like the idea of making rocket slime a little more literal. Like, you have, you know, space rockets. Okay, sure. I'm into it. Rocket flan? Yeah? The Starship interslym.

I mean, if we're also going... The Millennium Falgrew. You've got a spaceship, we've got a crew. That means you could also have Mass Effect-style romances. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. This is gold here. I always assume slimes were just parthenogenic.

No? I mean, you could push them together. Just push them together like Barbie dolls. They'll, you know, collide. That's how they make king slimes. Not how they make babies. All right. All right. I think we're getting punchy here.

It's true. Honestly, folks, that's the end of the series, and that's, I think, the end of the podcast. We've covered all the games in this little spinoff series that we all have great affection for, but there are no games left. If anyone is listening here from Square Renix, if Wattabe, if you're listening, please get in touch with us. We'd love to make Word Dragon Quest games with you, even though you don't work for Square Enix anymore. Actually, we should mention that. That's sort of the funny ending of all this story. after working at DNA, Watabe left and found his own company in 2017 called Made in Heaven.

Jojo Reference? I don't know. And he's apparently moved up in the world. He's working on producers and he's doing writing. He's credited as a co-creator of Netflix's Allison Borderland series. So he's in the big time now. He's getting streaming money. He's made it into film before Kojima. That must really, really, uh, cheap, chap, Kojima's hide.

Oh, no. There, yeah, back to Slime Walker. There it is. Slime meter, slime walker. Slime Walker. All right. I guess it's time to, to say goodbye to everybody. So, folks, uh, why don't we start with you, Alex?

Hi. Please tell the internet where they can find you if they want to find you. And perhaps the other podcast or streams. I guess, uh, well, first of all, I get a lot, I got a list of things here. Uh, if you are passing through Nagoya, Japan, please. Please visit Critical Hit. It is my used game shop. It's absolutely not a bar.

It doesn't have happy hour from 5 to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. It's right next to the Fushimi Hilton. When I am not working at the bar, I am also a professional voiceover artist, mostly for local Japanese companies, but you may have also heard me in Dan Olson's latest video. If you need a voice, please go to petui.org. That's P-I-T-O-H-U-I. Ray Barnholt and I have been doing a podcast for 12 years, No More Whoppers, which I like to describe as

Sid and Nancy meets Sid and Marty. Croft, a love-hate relationship that is also extremely goofy. I'm now four years sober and recently started a YouTube series called New Game Plus to discuss my experiences quitting alcohol. I stream RPGs on Twitch.com television slash hooded Patui. I'm on Twitter at Petui. I'm on Blue Sky at Patui.org. You know what?

You can see everything I do by visiting patui.org. Thank you. Woppers. I had Wopper today. They're good. Definitely worth it. Yeah. Jeremy, why don't you talk about your many, many projects that may or may not involve

slimes? Yeah, I just, I do a lot of stuff on the internet, and you can find me all over the place. So, you know, it's the usual routine. I'm on social media, mostly on blue sky as J. Parrish at, or J. Parish. It's a terrible setup. I hate the way they have the naming there. But I'm Jay Parrish on Blue Sky. And also doing Retronauts, doing limited run games, and doing my video series, NES works, et cetera.

So that's me. That's my week. It's busy. That's about it. Well, I must say, since you're both here, I'd like to thank both of you because you both make some excellent videos. Alex, I definitely watched your videos about pixel art and sober. And I'm looking forward to more talk about that.

And, uh, Jeremy, I just recently saw your video about the Adventures of Lolo, which is a fascinating game that I never heard of before. And then you also mentioned a tarot game, a tarot card game, which also fascinated me. Taboo, the sixth sense. Yeah. I probably would have bought that if I, if I had seen it at the time. I was already into it tarot cards at the time. It's pretty limited in terms of entertainment value because it's just the same thing every time

you do a reading. So it's like a three minute loop of, uh, just, you know, getting randomization. Well, we here at Retronauts very much appreciate your listeners and your attention. Thank you so much to listen to Retronauts. If you'd like, we appreciate anyone who listens to the show.

But if you'd like, you can support the show by going to Patreon.com slash Retronauts. Now, for $3 a month, you get all our episodes, one week early, higher quality audio. But guess what? For $5 a month, just $2 more than the number I just said,

you get so much more. You get two exclusive episodes every month. We've been doing that for four years now. You get a weekly column from me, and I read the column to you in a mini podcast. You get a community show that we started last year. Now in 224, it's going to continue. Every month we have a community show. That's usually me and another returnot talking about the latest news, and we read your feedback and your comments.

And Discord, you can join on Discord at the $5 level. So that's the number to go for. You can go more, of course. We all except more. But I would say the five, the five is alive when it comes to retronauts. As for me personally, you can look for me around the internet, Twitter, Blue Sky, what have you, as Fight Club, F-E-I-T, that is my last name, C-L-U-B. That is almost certainly an object you collect in Slime, Moor, or a Dragon Quest. At least one of those games, you pick up a club, and you throw it back to your house, and then you use it to build a shack, perhaps.

All right, I guess we're, uh, we're stretching, we're stretching out of here. Good night. Bye. Bion. Thanks, Diamond. I had a great slime. Thank you.