Wow, that's a great story. All you had was a Japanese dictionary, and no previous knowledge of Japanese? How long did it take you to finish the damn game?! I always find tales of perserverance like that fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

I'd kill for them to do something like that for Final Fantasy IV...

Seriously.

Hey... great site! I've been a fan for a while now and felt compelled to comment because of some of the similarities in my own life. I also started to learn Japanese around the same time, thanks to Final Fantasy V and Landstalker. And in 1997, was able to spend a few weeks in Japan with a friend. I seriously did not want to leave! My main goal since, has been to live there eventually. Anyway, keep up the good work...

vita -- yeah, it's hard to believe, but thinking back, that was my first real experience with the Japanese language. I'd played Japanese games before but I never bothered trying to understand the characters. The only thing I was able to read before this was スーパー because of the import Super Mario 3. :)

DQV probably took me 60 to 70 hours or so. I didn't try to translate too much of the story -- only the parts that I needed to be able to read in order to progress further into the game.

kitakyushu -- Thanks! Ahh, Landstalker. Great memories. And Final Fantasy V was actually my second import RPG; I bought it immediately upon finishing Dragon Quest V and subsequently finished that as well. That was a great game... possibly my favorite of the entire FF series thus far!

Your story about becoming involved with Japan and Japanese culture via a piece of its POP culture struck quite the cord with me. I had a very similar experience, although my catalyst was the Dragon Ball manga series. (How many lives has the work of Toriyama Akira touched, anyway?) At any rate, here I am myself, living in Kyoto, and still playing games. I only recently played this wonderful game in its original form on the S.F., but bought the new version for a friend's birthday present. It may be a while before I get to sit down with it myself, but one could do far worse than giving the gift of DQV.

so i guess you recommend this then. are they gonna release it in the US? also arent they releasing some new version of DQ besides this one? or was this what you used to post picts on tokyopia for?

Wow. Your story is very similar to my "story" thus far. My first import was Eirgeiz. I think it was after having the chance to play the JP demo of Metal Gear Solid that something clicked in my mind and I thought "Hmmm, I don't recall having a hobby.", The rest is history...and lots and lots of money spent, hah. Anyways, back in '99 I woke up one morning and out of the blue asked my mom (she knows the "world travel gig" well) to get something set up for me...I'm going to Japan. Well after having received the bad news that the so called tour was cancelled I said "so". That plane leaves on Aug. 9th....and I WILL be on it with or without tour. So that day I embarked on one hell of an adventure for 2 weeks. Only thing I had waiting for me was the hotel reservations (man that bus ride from Narita to Tokyo...2 hours...that WAS a trip). I basicly treated me been there like one of my imports. I mean of course, I learned basic Japanese, and could make out a few of the Kata/Hiragana and the common Kanji (and to think I'm still learning everything...I'm a bit slow). But knowning I went by myself without anyone to "hold my hand" was the best thing I've done in my life so far.
I too plan on moving to Japan hopefully in the next 2 (maybe less) years, but till that day comes I can't get my experiance out of my mind even after almost 5 years. Can't get the fact that when I took the JR to Akihabara and basicly dropped my wallet there out of my mind either, heh.
Ok, I know I left the topic after about the second sentence but this kinda felt like a good oportunity to share my experiance since it sounds too much alike.
Out of curiosity, john tv, how exactly did you go about finally moving to Japan. I mean for sure, you'd need money (me I'm thinking of blowing this circus when I have at least $5,000 in the bank for expenses). Another thing on my mind, where do you work at? (if I may ask). I've never really spoke with anyone that has moved there, like yourself, to sort of "coach" me for the future, you know.
Great site, love your updates and pictures.

Ja ne

this looked like a good place to post some unrelated information!
i just picked up this link from slashdot; and im sure all of us japan-philes will go nuts over it!
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/02/1451239&mode=thread&tid=159&tid=168&tid=186
its the akira motorcycle in all of its glory!!!!!!!
follow those links to see the beauty.
thought you all might like it!
PS - if possible put that link in a more appropriate place.
-Bryan

so, how is this DQV remake? i'm quite honestly interested in what you have to say about it.

that is, if you bought it.

it's 8,100 yen at my little game shop out here. ninja gaiden is 8,900.

can you please support or refute the following prediction?

"Dragon Quest VIII will be 10,000 yen."

and this one?

"Dragon Quest VIII could be the greatest game ever."

and this one (this one is easy)?

"Dragon Quest VIII will probably be the highest-selling Japanese game of all-time."

here's a tougher one:

"Yuji Horii is the only Japanese game developer who understands the Western idea of 'quality'."

and the last one:

"Yuji Horii is the most Japanese game-maker in all of Japan."

It's for a . . . project I'm doing. I'm kind of serious. No other American games journalists seem to give a shit about Dragon Quest. So!

Tim:

"Dragon Quest VIII will be 10,000 yen."

I doubt it. I'm pretty sure it'll be 7,800 yen...

"Dragon Quest VIII could be the greatest game ever."

You could say that about any game...

"Dragon Quest VIII will probably be the highest-selling Japanese game of all-time."

Nah... but it will probably be the best-selling PS2 game of all-time in Japan, at least.

"Yuji Horii is the only Japanese game developer who understands the Western idea of 'quality'."

Do you think so? What is the Western idea of quality, anyway? Horii said he took a lot of influence from Shigeru Miyamoto. He wants his games to be instantly accessible, no matter how seemingly complex they might be on the surface.

"Yuji Horii is the most Japanese game-maker in all of Japan."

Most Japanese? What does that mean? :)

kdoublec:

I wouldn't recommend DQV in Japanese unless you're really, really into DQ. Otherwise I'd just wait for the (hopefully) eventual U.S. release. The new one is DQVIII, which'll probably be out either late this year or sometime next year. That one looks really, really hot!

NeoEdo:

Thanks for the story. :)

"Out of curiosity, john tv, how exactly did you go about finally moving to Japan. I mean for sure, you'd need money (me I'm thinking of blowing this circus when I have at least $5,000 in the bank for expenses)."

I was fortunate enough to have my company (at the time) pay my way over to set me up here as a Japanese Correspondent. Of course, they went belly -up like two months after I got here, but hey -- the hardest part was just getting here. :) Compared to that, the rest (finding a job and staying) wasn't so bad.

"Another thing on my mind, where do you work at? (if I may ask)."

I work for a game licensing and localization company in Tokyo called InterOne. It's a small company. I'm in charge of the localization side. I also write for two mags on the side -- Electronic Gaming Monthly in the US and Nintendo Official Magazine in the UK.

Cool, didn't think you would post a reply to my "book long" post, heh (john tv).

You know when I went to Japan, i was working as a CAD Technician (draftsman) for an engineering firm, so having the money was no problem, unfortunaly the company basicly layed "itself" off, so I don't even think it exists anymore (This was in Texas, I live in Florida now).

I thought about taking up a drafting job in Japan, but when I stood in the middle of Tokyo and looked up I thought "damn....thats some heavy architectural action going on". So I later added a 2nd degree, Computer Graphic Design, to my resume. So the 'idea I have is to use that and perhaps work for a publishing, printing, etc. company in Japan...just a "on the fly" idea. Im sure I'd get there and go totally blank on the "LIVING" there plan, heh.

Thats a nice job you got. Its actually motivating to know you live in Japan, work in Japan, and it looks like your doing great. So I'll be damned if I ever look away from my ultimate goal of living there myself, heh.

Take it easy, and thanks!

Aww, no fun. You were supposed to use your imagination!

So are you going to give this game a 9.5 out of 10 like your oh-so-favorite DQVII? Me, bitter? Nah.

What a delightful tale that is, John tv. Almost like an epic in itself, I'm sure it is for you. And I was impressed reading it. I suppose I'm the exact opposite, in that I started off in Japan and ended up in England (an 'English speaking country', if you like). I can assure you it made an epic for me; culturally it was an interesting process. At the age of 12 I was taught how to read/write 26 letters of the alphabet. At 13, I was "dispatched" - like a parcel - to an english boarding school, 1000s of miles away from my parents or anyone who spoke Japanse, with an English-Japanese dictionary and a pillowcase. It was a remote part of Wiltshire (read: "middle of nowhere"). Needless to say it was a surreal experience to start off with, but I survived that somehow. Now I'm 26 and still living happily in England. At some point I ended up becoming an English myself, though perhaps it was a gradual process.

Dragon Quest V (FFV too) is by far the best RPG I've played, in many ways; the way it felt, the way the world of DQ made me feel, the way its world became my 2nd home. It was almost as if I never wanted to leave its world, I just wanted to stay there forever. The game play is perhaps somewhat weak by today's standard, but that had very little to do with why I loved it anyway. I liked DQ more than FF because of the way DQ made you - the player - the subject of the story. YOU were the character. YOU lived in their world. FF, on the other hand, is more like watching a movie - you are an observer, looking down upon those little characters living their lives as scripted. To highlight this point, DQ hero (you) don't speak by himself in the story. FF hero, however, speaks by himself, because he isn't you; he has a life of his own.

We all have a life story to tell, and that story is an epic in itself. Some of us have an epic in real life, and at the same time, experience another epic in Dragon Quest. Dragon Quest V is just another one of those epics, a fiction though it may be. Exactly the same turmoil of sensation if you live through it. In the world of one's mind, the boundary between the reality and fiction collapses somewhere along the line, because in the end what's going through it is the same - That is you. You, in a very human way.

That's my personal experience.

so in the end, when will dq5 for ps2 ever come out in english. u never even give out the anzwer. just a story about ur life. weird
so . be a good boy and tell me the answer.