Really the only mainline version I'm missing from the western released is the NES version of 4. I have all of the DS and 3DS Dragon Quest games as well as the GBC Trilogy, PSX version of 7, PS2 version of 8 and the PS4 and Switch version of 11. I've even got some of the weirder spin-offs like Last Hope.
Dragon Quest's continued failings in the west are mostly because it's not considered one of the OG NES Classics so they can't tard cum those member berries. People bought Pokemon Sword and Shield by the tens of millions and left the switch port of Dragon Quest 11 to rot. There was no Dragon Quest TV show, no merchandise or toyline, so it largely went ignored unlike Zelda, Megaman, Mario, Donkey Kong, and Pokemon.
The majority of the DQ fanbase are on playstation if anything is going to happen as far as re-releases of old games go, it's more than likely going to happen there at this point. Especially since Final Fantasy 7 is coming to playstation first for the immediate future square has it's install base on that platform and will more than likely market to that side more. Even Trials of Mana became multiplatform due to that.
Surely you're old enough to remember how heavily marketed Pokemon was in the late 90's. It's one of those things with so much universal appeal and good marketing that it just never went away. Pokemon Go did a great job in reviving interest in the series, and there's never been a single game in the main series that you could say was light on content. I've even heard about Pokemon being a popular game with those being deployed by the military because it's got a hell of a lot to do, and has never relied on an internet connection.
Meanwhile, Dragon Warrior always had an uphill battle outside of Japan. Something I've wondered is if that whole Satanic Panic thing in the late 80s shattered the series' first impressions in the west, considering the first four games on the NES were obscure, and 5 & 6 for SNES didn't even get an American release, despite that being the console where JRPGs really became wildly popular. Dragon Warrior 7 starting out miserably slow, not even letting you see a battle for the first few
HOURS surely didn't help, and Dragon Quest 8 seemed to be the first one that was popular enough westward that I can't call it obscure.
And then 10 was an MMORPG that America didn't get, and just as well, because by 2012, there were countless dead MMOs from even franchises that were huge in the west. The Matrix Online? Dead. Lord of the Rings Online? Dead. And let's not even talk about NCSoft's back catalog, they've got a veritable Auchwitz full of online games.
Yeah, there have been rereleases and spinoffs of Dragon Quest games, but they never really hit the mainstream due to the series never really being marketed very well. Keep in mind, Pokemon Red & Blue were released in late 1998, and were a lot of people's first RPGs. The Game Boy was a 9-year-old platform by then, so they were cheap and plentiful in the used market, and the game continued to be stocked for years to come. Even besides things like TV shows and toys, I never once saw an ad for Dragon Warrior 7, and didn't know a single other person who had played it, possibly even known about the franchise. I never saw any commercials or ads for it, while Pokemon stuff has just... always been heavily marketed. It's really never stopped. It's just one of those things you'll see when you're shopping for a new toothbrush, and you'll see the toothbrushes for kids with characters from Sesame Street, Barbie, Paw Patrol, and Pokemon.
They don't sell Dragon Quest toothbrushes. Well, there might be a bootleg one out there somewhere, but I don't think they'll ever make one. Fuck, I'd buy one. I'd buy a ten pack, that'd be sick. But if Square Enix would ever care about marketing anything other than Final Fantasy, maybe Dragon Quest could get a foothold in the west. But I guess instead of pouring an advertising budget into a game that's wildly popular in Japan, they see it fit to publish garbage like The Quiet Man and Life is Strange? I just don't know what's wrong with them.
I didn’t know that the DQ trilogy switch port was a thing until literally reading this post. I did some research hoping beyond hope that it was more than a lazy repackaging of the mobile ports from the past decade and was disappointed, but not surprised, to find out I was wrong,
I’ve been waiting for a well-considered update to DQIII in particular since literally my teens and SE has proven time and time again that they are not interested in going even an inch beyond the barest essentials necessary for a lazy port. This is despite numerous chances to do so in the 19 years since the Game Boy Color version which set the bar for system ports well before any of the modern trends towards the same.
(...)
Japan has consistently gotten the best ports of it; 1996 saw a Super Famicon version that added lush backgrounds, animations, a treasure hunting mini game and a board game side quest inserted at multiple points in the world progression. The US never saw this version, although an unofficial English patch does exist. The only versions released in the West before the Switch trilogy a were a 2014 iOS/Android port and the aforementioned GBC version. The Game Boy version lacks the visual fidelity (although its visuals are great for what they are) and keeps all of the side content and then some, including yet another dungeon on top of the post-game content already added in the SNES edition. The mobile port was a massive step backwards in many respects, ditching content such as the board-game and enemy animations while committing the unforgivable sin of a using a modernized HD user interface overlayed onto the SNES sprites with little care for the art direction as a whole. I believe most of the post-game content is intact, but I wasn’t eager to put money down and play through 30+ hours of now infamous janky mobile RPG presentation to get there.
Man, just play the fan translation of the SNES version. Trust me. Trials of Mana had a worse official translation on Collection of Mana than the 20 year old Neill Corlett translation, and somehow, the dialog boxes load slightly slower. Like they could have had a better product if they just licensed Neill Corlett's own romhack.
Whatever Square Enix today could possibly release will be worse than what fans can do for free.
