You read the title right. In some amazing turn of events, these two games are apparently being localized. At Japan Expo, in a last minute announcement, series creator Yuji Horii announced that the two games were coming in French. Of course they wouldn't just localize the game for a single European country, which means you can likely expect a full localization across the major regions. When they're coming is a total mystery, but here are some tweets from the event coverage:

• “Yuji Horii has just announced Dragon Quest VII and VIII will be released ‘in French’…?! Apparently a last minute announcement here at Japan Expo. Guess that means both titles at coming West on 3DS. I asked someone from Square Enix and it seems Horii dropping the bomb wasn’t planned.” (via @jkermarrec, 2)

• “At Japan Expo, a few hours after our interview, Yuji Horii has confirmed here that Dragon Quest VII and VIII are coming ‘in French.'” (via @FFRing)

• “Horii actually did mention 3DS for Dragon Quest VII and VIII localization. The translator got upset when he did.” (via @RedMakuzawa)

More details are sure to come, eventually. This announcement wasn't supposed to come this early apparently, so some people are upset with Horii, but now it's out there. @Bortz can now shoot his web all over the place.

Source

 

[VMM]

Spoiler: Here cums the spiderman

View attachment 21159

You and me both, borther.

Now we're three. I remember the first time playing DQM Joker and my first thought was:
Why does Pokémon have such shitty graphics when DQM look so amazing(in DS games perspective)?
The fusion mechanism and the wide variety of monsters made me in love with it,
when Joker two was released I started playing it from day one.
When TW was announced for 3DS I was so excited and started waiting for the game to be localized,
and I kept waiting and waiting until I realized it probably never would be localized.
Now I see this announcement and all I keep asking me is: Is there still any hope?
What do you think about it Bortz?

 

[BORTZ]

Now we're three. I remember the first time playing DQM Joker and my first thought was:
Why does Pokémon have such shitty graphics when DQM look so amazing(in DS games perspective)?
The fusion mechanism and the wide variety of monsters made me in love with it,
when Joker two was released I started playing it from day one.
When TW was announced for 3DS I was so excited and started waiting for the game to be localized,
and I kept waiting and waiting until I realized it probably never would be localized.
Now I see this announcement and all I keep asking me is: Is there still any hope?
What do you think about it Bortz?

I thought the exact same thing when I picked up Joker. I couldnt believe that the DS was capable of that. I couldn't believe that SE had the balls to attempt something like that on the DS either. But I am sure glad they did. Joker and Joker 2 pro (with SOuimets patch) took quite a few of my hours.

I was actually a bit bothered with a few things in Joker.
1. The axing of so many monsters and renaming of others. I realize this was done to "localize" the names, but some of them were so much more creative in the DW franchise. Also it created some interesting issues such as the name "Gold Golem". When talking to my friend who only ever played the newer Joker games he thought I was talking about this guy

But after seeing how puzzled he was about making one I realized that he didnt know what I was talking about. When I kept saying "It takes a special fusion. Blizzardy +5 x Blizzardy x Phoenix +5 x Phoenix" he kept asking why 4 birds would make a golden statue and I finally got that he had no idea that I meant this guy:

Who got renamed something dumb.

Anyways. That and 2, the lack of random areas (a la DWM or Terry's Wonderland) and grinding got old FAST.

Do I have hope for the Monsters games? Yes and no.
Yes: Because now Horii has acknowledged that the Western world would like to play the Dragon Quest titles. IF these two titles sell well enough (please purchase them, along with Heroes if any of you have a PS4), then the other two MIGHT stand a chance at seeing a Western sky. Am I hopeful this will happen?

No. Because its a miracle that 8 is A) being (de)made and ported to the 3DS and that B) its allegedly being brought across the seas to us English speakers. IMHO, 8 deserves to be remade on the finest of hardware, whether that be the mobile freedom of the Vita or the confines of the vastly superior PS4. If you have ever played the PS2 version you know its FUCKING* beautiful. Regardless, I would take 8 in just about any form available to me. But given those two opinions (which should be taken as facts ) I dont think 7 and/or 8 will sell well enough to merit Horii pushing Squeenix to allow him the budget to get us the monster series.

HOWEVER
I am strangely ok with that. The main number series has always had fun stories and lord knows that 7 and 8 are no slouches when it comes to content. Either game will take you a sizable amount of hours to complete. I know, the monster series will too, but the fun of those games doesnt come from reading endless dialogue or completeing fetch quests. It comes from crafting your next sweet monster who can crush anything that comes your way. And then doing it to the poor monster tamer that challenges you. With the two main series games coming our way, I have hope that we might be able to extract some data from them and make at very least a working menu/skills translation. Which, if someone can just do a quick overview of the story and a main quest walkthough on a wikipage somewhere, thats all we really need. Right?

*I dont like swearing, so dont take that lightly. When I say that word, I mean every ounce of emphasis I can get.

 

[tbb043]

This is amazing news. Shocking even. Don't they have Android/IOS in France? I thought that was the only handheld platform(s) Squeenix cared about outside Japan any more.

 

[michelthemaster]

The poor thing is, that nobody seems to be able to translate Terrys wonderland and we really have to wait for a SE port (even if romhacks are now possible)... Thats sooo sad :-(

 

[BORTZ]

The poor thing is, that nobody seems to be able to translate Terrys wonderland and we really have to wait for a SE port (even if romhacks are now possible)... Thats sooo sad :-(

Yeah but it might wet the taste in someones mouth to want to translate at least a little bit of the Monster games if we dont get anything from Square themselves.

 

[CathyRina]

Offtopic/ Speaking of Dragon Quest, a new Spin off was announced: http://gematsu.com/2015/07/dragon-quest-builders-announced-ps4-ps3-ps-vita

 

[BORTZ]

Offtopic/ Speaking of Dragon Quest, a new Spin off was announced: http://gematsu.com/2015/07/dragon-quest-builders-announced-ps4-ps3-ps-vita

YEP
http://gbatemp.net/threads/more-dragon-quest-news-builders-and-rumors-of-dq11.392404/#post-5565886

 

[chartube12]

I wonder if Nintendo is blocking SE from localizing Terry's 3D wonderland. I know I played the original gb title more then the pokemon games. Even after gold and silver were released, I still played the original Monster title alot.

 

[BORTZ]

I wonder if Nintendo is blocking SE from localizing Terry's 3D wonderland. I know I played the original gb title more then the pokemon games. Even after gold and silver were released, I still played the original Monster title alot.

Anything to back that up? Why would they do such a thing?

 

[Nathan Drake]

The lack of Terry's 3D Wonderland localization probably comes from the fact that the game really didn't sell amazingly well in Japan. I'm quoting VGChartz numbers here, so obviously a margin of error is present to some degree, but look at this:

Joker 1 (DS): Sold almost 1.5 million in Japan and an additional 226k throughout the rest of the world.
Joker 2 (DS): Sold 1.24 million in Japan and a kind of meh 170k throughout the rest of the world.
Joker 2 Professional: Only sold 620k in Japan, did not get localized.
Terry's Wonderland 3D: Sold 960k in Japan, not safe enough numbers to warrant a localization.
Dragon Quest Monsters 2 (remake): Only sold 790k in Japan.

It just hasn't been a good idea to localize the last few Monsters games. SE knows that DQ is niche in the west, but sells like hotcakes in Japan. If a DQ game doesn't perform well in Japan and they can only expect upwards of 20% of total Japanese sales across the rest of the world, there is ultimately little incentive to localize a title that fails to break even 1 million sales in Japan.

 

[VMM]

I thought the exact same thing when I picked up Joker. I couldnt believe that the DS was capable of that. I couldn't believe that SE had the balls to attempt something like that on the DS either. But I am sure glad they did. Joker and Joker 2 pro (with SOuimets patch) took quite a few of my hours.

I was actually a bit bothered with a few things in Joker.
1. The axing of so many monsters and renaming of others. I realize this was done to "localize" the names, but some of them were so much more creative in the DW franchise. Also it created some interesting issues such as the name "Gold Golem". When talking to my friend who only ever played the newer Joker games he thought I was talking about this guy
View attachment 21217
But after seeing how puzzled he was about making one I realized that he didnt know what I was talking about. When I kept saying "It takes a special fusion. Blizzardy +5 x Blizzardy x Phoenix +5 x Phoenix" he kept asking why 4 birds would make a golden statue and I finally got that he had no idea that I meant this guy:
View attachment 21218
Who got renamed something dumb.

Anyways. That and 2, the lack of random areas (a la DWM or Terry's Wonderland) and grinding got old FAST.

Do I have hope for the Monsters games? Yes and no.
Yes: Because now Horii has acknowledged that the Western world would like to play the Dragon Quest titles. IF these two titles sell well enough (please purchase them, along with Heroes if any of you have a PS4), then the other two MIGHT stand a chance at seeing a Western sky. Am I hopeful this will happen?

No. Because its a miracle that 8 is A) being (de)made and ported to the 3DS and that B) its allegedly being brought across the seas to us English speakers. IMHO, 8 deserves to be remade on the finest of hardware, whether that be the mobile freedom of the Vita or the confines of the vastly superior PS4. If you have ever played the PS2 version you know its FUCKING* beautiful. Regardless, I would take 8 in just about any form available to me. But given those two opinions (which should be taken as facts ) I dont think 7 and/or 8 will sell well enough to merit Horii pushing Squeenix to allow him the budget to get us the monster series.

HOWEVER
I am strangely ok with that. The main number series has always had fun stories and lord knows that 7 and 8 are no slouches when it comes to content. Either game will take you a sizable amount of hours to complete. I know, the monster series will too, but the fun of those games doesnt come from reading endless dialogue or completeing fetch quests. It comes from crafting your next sweet monster who can crush anything that comes your way. And then doing it to the poor monster tamer that challenges you. With the two main series games coming our way, I have hope that we might be able to extract some data from them and make at very least a working menu/skills translation. Which, if someone can just do a quick overview of the story and a main quest walkthough on a wikipage somewhere, thats all we really need. Right?

*I dont like swearing, so dont take that lightly. When I say that word, I mean every ounce of emphasis I can get.

I didn't knew that one from the Gold Golem, usually I'm a Dragon tamer so I never needed to do this monster.
Though I remember how hard for me it was to make my first Rank X dragon, I needed the X Rank Slime for that,
and to get that X metal slime I had to do the Kaiser Metal Slime and the King Metal Slime, for those I needed fusing Liquid Metal Slimes,
which required Metal Slimes to be fused, I think I have already caught and trained 50 Metal Slimes or more for a single monster.
Also it's not like Metal Slimes are actually common, they're not, so I had to teleport and try many times for getting them.
Although it was quite hard, I was quite happy in doing it.

 

[BORTZ]

@VMM Have you ever played the original Dragon Warrior Monsters for GBC? Its a bit dated now, but playable on any emulator that allows for fast forward. When I played the most recent time (its like my favorite game of all time, hence the tears over TW not getting localized), I think I skirted both Metalslime x Metalslime trees in favor of getting a kingslime and a... something else to turn into a Metal King. For the otherside, I think I actually went over and got that "Gold golem" (OG, not the rock thing) and bred that with my Metalking to get a Goldslime, the highest slime in the original game. I am basically invincible now.

 

[VMM]

@VMM Have you ever played the original Dragon Warrior Monsters for GBC? Its a bit dated now, but playable on any emulator that allows for fast forward. When I played the most recent time (its like my favorite game of all time, hence the tears over TW not getting localized), I think I skirted both Metalslime x Metalslime trees in favor of getting a kingslime and a... something else to turn into a Metal King. For the otherside, I think I actually went over and got that "Gold golem" (OG, not the rock thing) and bred that with my Metalking to get a Goldslime, the highest slime in the original game. I am basically invincible now.

Never played it, I actually wanted to, but since Terry Wonderland was announced I decided to wait and see.
Right now I'm hoping for some fan translation or Squeenix to make a move.
Also, I started working, and that together with college takes a lot of time, I have a PS4 and barely play it,
my 3DS also is getting dust, maybe, by December, I'll have some time to restart playing videogames.

 

[BORTZ]

Never played it, I actually wanted to, but since Terry Wonderland was announced I decided to wait and see.
Right now I'm hoping for some fan translation or Squeenix to make a move.
Also, I started working, and that together with college takes a lot of time, I have a PS4 and barely play it,
my 3DS also is getting dust, maybe, by December, I'll have some time to restart playing videogames.

Yeah I hear ya. I would love square to localize the game goodness gracious. But its fun to go back and play the unadulterated original.

 

[VMM]

Yeah I hear ya. I would love square to localize the game goodness gracious. But its fun to go back and play the unadulterated original.

Gameboy games looked great for the time, but now I just can't play them,
they look ugly and feel dated, at least for me, maybe I'll give it a try, but I thank you for your advice.

 

[BORTZ]

Gameboy games looked great for the time, but now I just can't pay them,
they look ugly and feel dated, at least for me, maybe I'll give it a try, but I thank you for your advice.

No you are certainly correct. They are old looking and super dated. You should be able to blast through the first few games in an hour or so. If that doesn't hold you attention just put it down haha.

 

[michelthemaster]

Does nobody knows here about a fan translation from Terrys Wonderland? If i remember correctly, there even have been a fan-translation vom the 2th joker game... Can`t believe that nobody wanna do this to TW ^^

 

[JazzCat.CL]

I hope this can be true!

 

[GHANMI]

The lack of Terry's 3D Wonderland localization probably comes from the fact that the game really didn't sell amazingly well in Japan. I'm quoting VGChartz numbers here, so obviously a margin of error is present to some degree, but look at this:

Joker 1 (DS): Sold almost 1.5 million in Japan and an additional 226k throughout the rest of the world.
Joker 2 (DS): Sold 1.24 million in Japan and a kind of meh 170k throughout the rest of the world.
Joker 2 Professional: Only sold 620k in Japan, did not get localized.
Terry's Wonderland 3D: Sold 960k in Japan, not safe enough numbers to warrant a localization.
Dragon Quest Monsters 2 (remake): Only sold 790k in Japan.

In what kind of alternate dimension are these numbers not good enough sales for an RPG, let alone a spin-off of an RPG?
Japanese sales for the initial version of Bravely Default were around 300,000, and that was considered a success.

Also, I don't really think Nintendo is blocking this... they no longer can afford treating third-parties like this. And if they saw themselves threatened by this Pokémon-like game, why would they not allow this yet still allow Spectrobes and Youkai Watch, among other series (Medabots, Digimon, etc)...

The reason DQ Monsters didn't get localized yet is that Square Enix America is a mess. They localized tons of games during the DS era (including a Final Fantasy game, no less) that they then just sat on after finishing them because of focus groups and ill-advised market studies. And it continues in the 3DS era, with even other Final Fantasy titles (FF1 3DS remake, and FF Explorers) being passed over.
A lot of the iOS games they'd rather localize than these have bombed far harder (around 10 to 40k sales, with 15$ price tag) than games they considered bombs in the past (like the DQ remakes selling 200k on 40$ with no advertisements).

 

[Nathan Drake]

In what kind of alternate dimension are these numbers not good enough sales for an RPG, let alone a spin-off of an RPG?
Japanese sales for the initial version of Bravely Default were around 300,000, and that was considered a success.

Also, I don't really think Nintendo is blocking this... they no longer can afford treating third-parties like this. And if they saw themselves threatened by this Pokémon-like game, why would they not allow this yet still allow Spectrobes and Youkai Watch, among other series (Medabots, Digimon, etc)...

The reason DQ Monsters didn't get localized yet is that Square Enix America is a mess. They localized tons of games during the DS era (including a Final Fantasy game, no less) that they then just sat on after finishing them because of focus groups and ill-advised market studies. And it continues in the 3DS era, with even other Final Fantasy titles (FF1 3DS remake, and FF Explorers) being passed over.
A lot of the iOS games they'd rather localize than these have bombed far harder (around 10 to 40k sales, with 15$ price tag) than games they considered bombs in the past (like the DQ remakes selling 200k on 40$ with no advertisements).

Not that I don't believe you since no game developer seems to have their shit together these days, but [citation needed]. As it stands, I don't think some of these localization decisions are comparable. The DS era saw a lot of localizations because the DS sold stupidly well (and yes, nearly every DS Final Fantasy game got localized except I think one or two more obscure spinoffs). There was an enormous available market, and just about every developer wanted to try to take advantage of it in someway. The 3DS on the other hand, as you may know, is not selling amazingly well. It has only amassed approximately 1/3 of total DS sales to date and has next to no sales momentum left. It's actually the worst selling family of Nintendo handhelds, so there's that. There is not a huge market to appeal to that can compensate for niche interests. As well, I don't think it's a coincidence that with Dragon Quest, every localization seems to be of a title that sold over 1 million in Japan, while everything skipped failed to breach that. There are very few exceptions in that trend, and all are relatively easily explained away due to circumstances of a given generation.

Even then, Bravely Default was clearly a gamble. SE was either looking for an excuse to not try with the 3DS in NA, or they legitimately thought the game would perform well. I'm guessing it was a lot more the former than the latter since I don't believe it's much of a trend for JRPGs to perform better outside of Japan than in Japan. When it comes to the iOS ports of FF and DQ, that's because that was basically copy and paste English script already, and SE probably wrongly assumed that the 100 million people wanting to play Candy Crush and Temple Run were totally gonna hop on board with their mobile RPG conversions.

I'm not saying that SE doesn't make an odd localization decision here or there, but for the most part, it seems they have some very clear expectations for the performance of a Dragon Quest game in Japan before they'll consider bringing it over, spinoff or not. I won't try to understand why other localization decisions are made beyond what I already have, but considering Dragon Quest is their crown jewel in Japan that traditionally struggles in the west, it makes sense that their expectations would be somewhat high for it as a series.