This Week in Games

A Good Week For Dragons And Novels

Welcome back, everyone! I'd like you all to know I've been making slight progress on a chain of floating islands near a castle in Xenoblade Chronicles 3. With any luck, I'll be storming that castle by July. Expect further delays in Xenoblade as I have some fun surprises to cover elsewhere for the site...

I've also been seeing a lot of talk from people who won't let go of Tears of the Kingdom having less-than-cutting-edge frame rates or graphical fidelity. Ignoring the fact that it looks about the same as Breath of the Wild (which people were parading as the gold standard for what Switch games should look like for literal years, ask Game Freak), this is a rich complaint considering the sheer number of games that developers have had to apologize for being unplayable out of the box—enough for people to create a collage of them.

The Redfall one was a gag, but when enough of these start coming out that Linus Tech Tips can write what is otherwise a fairly convincing template for these things, I think people need to re-evaluate what it is we expect from games and realize that bleeding-edge visuals and framerates might be for the birds. Forget about frame rates; the raw programming witchcraft that allows for the shenanigans in Tears of the Kingdom will put other games to shame for years. I'll keep this in mind when the utterly non-functional Starfield is released to "ironic" cries of "lol, It Just Works!" Ugh.

Dragon Quest's latter-day vindication in the US makes me happy; I cut my teeth on the Dragon Warrior I&II collection on GameBoy Color, and I've carried a torch for the series ever since... which meant being the one Dragon Quest defender while the gaming industry decided that colorful character designs, turn-based battles, random encounters, and generally not being a gunmetal-grey shooter with cover-based mechanics were Very, Very Bad™ and Not Real Game Design™. But the best revenge is living well; Dragon Age and Mass Effect aren't enjoying the excitement that Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age garnered. Dragon Quest's popularity has led to anime and manga... and one of those adaptations is finally getting recursively adapted into a game!

Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai was a manga made back in 1989 (when I was born!) that lasted for seven years, detailing the adventures of the Dragon Knight Dai and his friends as he traveled the world and faced off against threats both familiar and unique to their own story. Written by Riku Sanjo, who would go on to make Beet the Vandel Buster, the manga was quite beloved. It even aired in Latin America for a time—I never managed to watch Las Aventuras de Fly as a kid, but it was cool to know there was a show. The Adventure of Dai managed to get a new anime back in 2020, which I was fortunate enough to cover during my tenure atThis Week in Anime as my second-ever column. It's a wildly fun show and also became influential to the Dragon Quest games; while the Adventure of Dai manga did a great job of re-creating Akira Toriyama's art style, it introduced a whole bunch of cool attacks for Dai that would go on to inspire long-running Dragon Quest abilities like the famed Gigaslash, while the aforementioned Dragon Quest XI would go on to make the Earthsplitter and Seasplitter attacks canonical to the games.

In honor of Dai's great contributions to the series, Square Enix is finally rendering tribute to this great piece of Dragon Quest history by adapting The Adventure of Dai into a game! Titled Infinity Strash - Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai, you play as Dai and his friends Popp the mage, and Maam, the martial artist, as they set out to defeat the Demon Lord. It's an action RPG instead of a turn-based RPG, but the game is dedicated to re-creating the story and its most famous beats. The art style is perfectly captured, and if anything, might even do a better job of making Dai and company fit within Akira Toriyama's art style; Gomu-chan the Golden Metal Slime's Arale-esque expression is a brilliant interpretation of Akira Toriyama's iconic design crossed with Koji Inada's particular take on the art.

In addition to adapting the manga, the game will add two fun features. First are the Bond Memories, items that represent key moments from the anime and manga that will boost characters' stats when equipped. The other is the Temple of Recollection, a randomized dungeon with 100 rooms where monsters and traps are reshuffled every time you enter. I like this; more action games should offer rogue-like dungeons.

There are several goodies available if you pre-order Infinity Strash; first up, ordering the Digital Deluxe edition lands you a series of "Legendary" outfits for Popp, Maam, Hyunckel, and Dai. Popp gets the Legendary Mage outfit, which makes him look like the stereotypical Mage from Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation. Maam will get both the Legendary Priest and Legendary Martial Artist outfits, which grant her the Female Priest and Female Martial Artist outfits from the same game. (Hey man, an entire generation of Japanese gamers grew up with brain worms over Priestess and Female Martial Artists.) Hunckel gets the Legendary Swordsman and Legendary Warrior outfits. Pre-ordering either version gets Dai the Legendary Hero outfit, making him look like the hero from DQIII. Pre-ordering the game also gets the "The Hero's Tutor" Bond Memory featuring the goofy-but-memorable countenance of Avan. This Bond Memory boosts your EXP gain. You can also get the Hero's Tutor Bond Memory by beating the Temple of Recollection... but it looks like Square Enix wants to pull the "Wanna skip the grind, tee-hee?" card. You can look forward to Infinity Strash - Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai this September 28th on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Store, and Steam. I'm hoping I get to cover it!

Let's double-dip on the theme of Dragon Quest. Dragon Quest being far more prevalent in Japan than the US means that there is a metric butt-load of Dragon Quest spin-offs that folks aren't quite as familiar with. The Dragon Quest Monsters series is chief among them. Square Enix marked the 25th anniversary of this series this past week with a special video lovingly covering all of the games in the series.

The video ends with a special announcement confirming a new game in the series is being developed; with the entire video being officially subtitled in English, there's hope that this means this one will be brought over to the United States. The news makes this old Dragon Quest fan happy, 'cuz uh... Square-Enix (and old Enix, from before the merger) has a bad history of not bringing these games over.

There's a lot of history to all of this. Releasing in 1998 in Japan (it was localized for the US in 2000 as Dragon Warrior Monsters—long story), you'd be forgiven for thinking Dragon Quest Monsters was a desperate attempt at cashing in on the collectible monsters trend that Pokémon kicked off fueled by Akira Toriyama's beloved monster designs. Not so! Starting from 1992's Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride, monster taming was a key component. The hero of that game could canonically tame monsters; while officially, this meant a Sabercat named "Saber" was an official party member, you could also recruit all kinds of other monsters to fill out your ranks—useful, considering many of your human party members are absent in your party for long periods. There was a ton of strategy here: while not every monster could be recruited, a great many could. Each could learn unique spells or wear specific equipment; raising them was fairly unique. Some monsters were pretty humdrum, like the humble Slime, while others were like the Goodybag and had huge stats at the expense of an extremely low-level cap and not enough Wisdom to follow your orders in combat. It's a fun mechanic that ties into the game's story, and it did a lot to expand upon the iconic monsters of the Dragon Quest series. Now, instead of being mindless creatures of evil, monsters were just critters that lived all over the world and sometimes found themselves bullied into villainy by overlords.

Monster recruitment as an ability would come back in Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation. While the feature was removed from the Nintendo DS port, the original Super Famicom version of the game allowed anyone playing as the Monster Master class to recruit monsters. And it's here that the tale gets interesting, particularly when it comes to the Dragon Quest VI character of Terry—because Terry is the one who would go on to become the protagonist of the first Dragon Quest Monsters title! As young Terry went around the kingdom of GreatTree in search of his kidnapped sister, he would occasionally bump into his older self, who would snark at his younger self's idealism and kindness. It's possible to slay DQVI's Durahan as young Terry, freeing his older self from the demon's control.

Now, there were a ton of unique features to Dragon Quest Monsters; monsters could be swayed to your team if you bribed them with snacks during battle, but wild monsters had a Loyalty stat that would only decrease with more snacks. If the stat wasn't low enough, they might not obey you in battle—this wasn't a factor with monsters you had bred yourself. And the breeding was very involved: the entire bestiary was divvied into monster "families," and you could get all kinds of wild things by breeding the suitable monsters together—but you needed to make sure the monster pair was a male and female. Anyone who's bred Pokémon can see where this is coming from regarding satisfying number-crunching lineage optimization, as monsters would inherit the skills from both parents. It was even possible to land yourself lore-significant Dragon Quest characters like the villainous overlord Dracolord or the Godbird Ramia herself.

Dragon Quest Monsters 2 would try the Pokémon mechanic of having two versions of the game with unique rosters. They also swapped protagonists: one version had you playing as the young Cobi, and the other starred his younger sister Tara. Following that, there were several other Dragon Quest Monsters titles (one of which even starred a young Kiefer from Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past), but we wouldn't see the series in the US again until the two Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker games were brought over to the US. There was an updated re-release of the second DQM:J we never got, much to the despair of Dragon Quest fans, and that was that. The subsequent ports and remakes for the Dragon Quest Monsters games have never been brought stateside, which is a real loss. As mentioned earlier, there are tons of fun Dragon Quest spin-offs that have been left by the wayside when it comes to localizing them (ask any fan of the Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime games to see some serious pain). You'd think the latter-day success of Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age would encourage Square Enix to bring more of them over, but apparently, Square Enix said nuts to that because we needed The Quiet Man instead of the Switch ports for Dragon Quest Monsters 2.

This is why the recent video is heartening; they specifically subtitled it in English officially, so we might get this in the US. From the looks of things, this one's still early in development, but I'm keeping our fingers crossed. Maybe it'll star a young version of the Dragon Quest VIII protagonist (hey, he kept a pet mouse, there's a precedent for taming right there!), and maybe it'll start a new bunch of kids. I'll keep an eye out for this one!

In other celebratory news, Konami celebrated the 29th anniversary of the seminal visual novel series Tokimeki Memorial this past week with new art of series icon Shori from the series' longtime illustrator Kokura Masashi!

This is another one I want to go over for a bit because Tokimeki Memorial is very important in the world of Japanese game development history—and it gets almost no lip service in the US. Konami's treatment of the series doesn't help (even Kokura Masashi admitted that the anniversary art was the first time they'd drawn any TokiMemo art in 12 years). None of the games had ever been brought to the US, partly because the first one was initially released on the PC Engine in 1994 (it was later ported to other consoles like the Super Famicom and PlayStation). You play as a freshman trying to find love in high school, but in addition to saying the right thing to the right girl, you also need to raise your stats right—taking a cue from Gainax's Princess Maker games (another underappreciated common ancestor for many Japanese games), you could dedicate time to increasing your stats to better curry favor with the various paramours. Of course, you had to pay close attention to the girl of your dreams: if you neglected them in-game for too long, they'd get annoyed and gossip about you behind your back, damaging your reputation with everyone.

TokiMemo would go on to introduce several innovations, technical or otherwise. Tokimeki Memorial 2 would introduce the "Emotional Voice System," wherein the paramours in-game would pronounce your name in-game. The game also emphasized puzzling out each paramour's particular "deal" to win them over. There was also a distaff version of the series, the Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side games, which not only allowed you to play the game as a woman but also introduced some features on the Nintendo DS like "skinship"—basically, touching and prodding your paramour using the Nintendo DS touchscreen. A lot of these features and themes from across the Tokimeki Memorial series would go on to inspire Konami's Love Plus games on the Nintendo DS, which themselves went on to become a massive sensation. The "skinship" feature was eventually—and infamously—incorporated into Fire Emblem: Fates, so even Nintendo was paying attention. The focus on romance over sex in the TokiMemo series can also be considered an inspiration to other romance-focused visual novel series like the ToHeart games, KimiKiss and Amagami—all of which were massively popular in Japan for a hot minute and even earned anime adaptations that were entirely lost on fans in the US because turning a 50-hour VN into a 12-episode anime is a fool's errand.

Also, this needs saying: Koji Igarashi was the writer for the first TokiMemo game while his then-girlfriend-now-wife was working on Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. So all-around, these games were wildly influential in Japan.

Much like Dragon Quest earlier, the anniversary art shared above comes with some rumblings that make fans curious. For one, the 29th anniversary came with the creation of a Twitter account revving up for the 30th anniversary next year. For another, Konami has been making a ton of waves with their recent revivals for some of their bigger franchises—Suikoden is getting a compilation for the first two games, there are a slew of Silent Hill games in the works, Konami is trotting out the corpse of Metal Gear Solid without Hideo Kojima at the helm (and also re-releasing the original games, for good measure)... a TokiMemo revival would fit among those quite nicely, even if it never came to the US. Hey, maybe Konami finally got the hint that Pachinko games can't keep your company afloat? Here's hoping Konami is finally course-correcting.

Okay, so let's keep the "Konami" train going. Last week, we broke the ice on Metal Gear Solid's big comeback; Konami is remaking the beloved 🎵 SNAKE EATER~ (doo doo doo do doooo) 🎵, while also bringing back the first three titles as the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1. It seems fortune is smiling upon Metal Gear Solid because another of its related projects is returning from the shadows: the Metal Gear Solid board game.

This game might be somewhat familiar to fans of board games; the last time this game popped up was in 2018. Created by Emerson Matsushi, this original version of the Metal Gear Solid board game, titled... "Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game" ("Hrrrghn... Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game?") was up on Backerkit before sadly being canceled by IDW, a prelude to IDW shuttering their games division. Thankfully, the game's design was preserved; hence returning now under publisher CMON. Currently, the project is available for pre-order; the $100 pre-order version includes a 109-page graphic novel (illustrated by IDW artist Kenneth Loh) and an exclusive pre-order figure of Metal Gear REX.

So, how does the game work? Well, it's one of those board games that blur the line between "board game" and "simple table-top RPG"; you and three other players (utilizing pieces representing Solid Snake, Meryl, Grey Fox, and Otakon) sneak through arranged boards that are being patrolled by Genome Soldiers or surveyed by cameras. Each turn, guards patrol a specific area; falling within their line-of-sight alerts the guards, wherein you'll have to fight your way out. There are also "boss encounters" against the enemy FOXHOUND operatives Revolver Ocelot, Sniper Wolf, Vulcan Raven, and Liquid Snake, culminating in the showdown against Metal Gear REX. Enemy bosses have a small deck of cards for their abilities. Players have cards representing the abilities their characters can utilize... again, this is a simplified tabletop RPG more than anything else. There are 14 "missions" detailing a campaign mode meant to re-create the critical moments of the main game, as well as a collection of stand-alone "VR missions."

I'm genuinely impressed by the design of the game, even if it's all a bit complicated (I've never played anything more involved than Settlers of Catan). I'm always down for a good game getting a second chance at life, analog or otherwise. If you want that Metal Gear REX figure, you'd best pre-order your copy of the game fast—it releases sometime in 2024, but I imagine pre-orders will sell out much earlier than that.

And there's the combo-breaker... Anyway, the death of Nintendo Power was a big blow to the game industry in the United States. Sure, it was a magazine owned by Nintendo, so it's easy to think they'd publish puff pieces on anything being released on the console... but it was also a landmark publication for gaming news in America. At the peak of Nintendo mania, it was the resource for news on the biggest games (those being Nintendo games, considering they controlled 90% of the market back in the NES days). And it wasn't just the grip on the info they held; there was a ton of artistic ambition: famously, their Secret of Mana guide read more like a novel of the series than just an informational guide. And the Nintendo Power pages were also graced with some fantastic art. Not only was this where Nintendo would get piles and piles of fantastic artwork for the Legend of Zelda by the famed Katsuya Terada—artwork which, tragically, Nintendo wouldn't follow up on following Link to the Past. Can you imagine some of Terada's work for something like Tears of the Kingdom? Can you imagine Tears of the Kingdom utilizing Terada's art style? The mind reels! Oh, yeah, and Nintendo Power also had a ton of comics based on their biggest games that influenced lore and fandom for decades; people still swear by Princess Peach's personality in Super Mario Adventures, and it's still mind-boggling that Nintendo got a Link to the Past comic drawn by Shotaro Ishinomori himself.

Anyway, when Nintendo Power folded in 2012, various writers end editors came together to found Nintendo Force magazine, which attempted—and, arguably, succeeded—at continuing where the esteemed magazine left off. I say "arguably succeeded" because they're still at it to this very day, and their efforts have led them to take a very unique turn: book publishing. They've even hit the big 1-0 anniversary doing so! Earlier this week, Nintendo Force decided to ring in their tenth birthday with an announcement of their Kickstarter campaign for their first book: The Impact of Iwata.

Satoru Iwata should need no introduction. Originally a game developer at HAL Laboratory, Iwata was the President of Nintendo for thirteen years, from 2002 to his untimely death from cancer at the age of 55 in 2015. While this was amid "Japan Bad" in the gaming industry, and many of his decisions came under intense scrutiny, the gaming industry nevertheless beloved Iwata and his smiling visage. Iwata's early days at Nintendo were the sign of some serious programming wizardry; his keen eye helped the company squeeze out every bit of functionality out of their systems. Famously, his streamlining efforts allowed Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal to have so much space left over that Game Freak could include the Kanto region as post-game content. His time as Nintendo's president during their lean Wii U years is also an indictment against any other CEO in the gaming industry; rather than entertain the idea of lay-offs to preserve company profits, Iwata slashed his salary in half in the belief that Nintendo couldn't produce world-class games if their devs were anxious over job security. To say nothing of the success of his attempt at utilizing "Blue Ocean Strategy" to spur Nintendo to develop the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS in stark defiance of industry trends that nevertheless led to intense success, Iwata was also very keen at fostering a unique relationship between Nintendo and its consumer base. His series of Iwata Asks interviews allowed developers to be very candid in discussing their methods and philosophies in game development (in researching this, I learned there's a fascinating entry concerning Xenoblade Chronicles's soundtrack. It was also Iwata's idea to eschew the typical appearances at gaming tradeshows in exchange for their "Nintendo Directs," which he would host as he brought the latest news about upcoming Nintendo games "directly to you." This was another opportunity to bring in staff members to answer a few quick questions about game development. Mans loved talking about programming; what can I say? Apocryphally, when Iwata passed and Nintendo needed to gear up for the development of the Nintendo Switch, they reportedly ended every meeting leading up to the console's launch with a resounding cry of "For Iwata!" I haven't been able to locate the citation of that story, but I'll believe it; Nintendo even put the NES Golf game into the basic programming of the Nintendo Switch. You can't even access it or anything, and it's since been scrubbed as of the 4.0 update patch, the entire game's code is just baked into the console as a "charm" of sorts to honor his memory—because he was the sole programmer for that title.

Nintendo Force published a far better tribute to Iwata than I could ever write in a 2015 issue following the news of his death from bile duct cancer. Ten years out from the start of their magazine, they want to do one better, publishing a book about Iwata's entire career, over 220 pages and sixteen chapters, from his beginnings as a humble programmer to the end of his legacy. While much of the story will cover what was already published in the 2015 issue, the writers will also include extra goodies they couldn't include back then. At the time of writing, the campaign is going strong: one day out, they've already hit $24,024 of their $25,000 goal. Word's mum on stretch goals, but being a comprehensive biography on the career of one of the most beloved figures in video gaming is enough. The campaign runs through July 13th; folks who love Nintendo history or those who really love the memory of Satoru Iwata will want in on this one.

I try to cover visual novels as much as possible here at This Week in Games, and way back when I started, I touched on the remake of beloved visual novel One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e,. Originally released in 1998, this seminal VN tells the story of Kouhei Oihara, a young man still reeling from the loss of his family. His mind and soul are threatened with sinking into an Eternal World born within his mind; unless he can form a permanent bond with someone in the real world within one week, he'll vanish from reality and be forgotten by everyone.

If the story sounds somewhat familiar, it's because many of One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e,'s developers would go on to found Visual Arts/Key, the creators of beloved "utsuge" (read: sad visual novels) like the seminal sick-girl-dying-in-the-snow simulator Kanon, as well as the follow-ups Air and Clannad. Kouhei's situation eerily resembles Fuko Ibuki from Clannad, wherein the memory of her existence comes under threat—y'know, just with fewer starfish.

It was known for a while that ONE. would be getting an updated re-release in Japan in honor of Nexton's 30th anniversary, with updated character designs by Itaru Hinoue and improved systems to bring it more in line with modern VNs. It was also slated for a release on the Nintendo Switch in Japan. Luckily, utsuge fans can look forward to it coming to America! Shiravune, which has recently started localizing visual novels in the US, announced this past week that it would be localizing ONE. onto Steam with an English, Japanese, and Chinese language track. It'll be released on Steam on December 21st, 2023—the same date as the Japanese release.

Shiravune wasn't done yet, though; earlier this week, they also announced their plans to re-release the Kara no Shoujo titles in the US!

Kara no Shoujo is also a very beloved visual novel series... for different reasons than One. This is a trilogy of dark mystery VNs, detailing a detective's investigations into a series of gruesome murders in 1954 Japan. Kara no Shoujo had been released in the US before by MangaGamer; this new set of releases will be based on the HD remastered versions of the Kara no Shoujo games that were recently released in Japan.

There is some consternation among fans concerning this release for several reasons. For one, MangaGamer came up with some difficulties in their attempts at releasing Kara no Shoujo on Steam; the second game was banned for sale on the platform, after all, given the sexual and violent subject matter (much of it involving students). There is also much ado about the translation; MangaGamer's translation for the Kara no Shoujo games is highly regarded, and many fans are incredibly particular about the series being done justice with its script. With regards to the content, likely, Shiravune will release censored versions of the visual novels on Steam with the controversial content completely excised while offering a patch somewhere offsite that restores the content; having purchased one of Shiravune's other releases (itself another updated re-release of a visual novel MangaGamer released), I can confirm that's what they did to ensure that adult game could get released on Steam. As for the translation... yeah, I can see why people would get worried. With regards to the VN I'm playing, I can say that the Shiravune script isn't up to par with the MangaGamer script—you lose a lot of points with me if you can't get the basic "they're/there/their" or "your/you're" usage right in your product. Much of the content patched back in was also still censored—MangaGamer's version had removed all of the censorings. On the upside, the Shiravune release for the game in question adds much content that MangaGamer hadn't included. So the precedent is concerning.

Thankfully, Shiravune is aware of the consternation, and translator John Hooper responded to many of the concerns on Twitter. While none of the MangaGamer script for Kara no Shoujo will be used, they will strive to its level of quality, and they'll be utilizing the terminology established by its localization. Hooper is quoted as considering his teams' efforts on Kara no Shoujo one of the greatest challenges and efforts of their career.

Again, I do need to underline: Kara no Shoujo deals with very dark themes and has very graphic moments, including violence and sexuality; it's not a title I'd ever recommend for our younger readers (hence why I'm not linking the Steam page). But its (adult) fanbase stands by it as a horror series, and its writing has enthralled many for about fifteen years. I can't speak with any first-hand experience towards the series, but seeing many's dedication to it... I'm willing to give them the nod. While the notion of "mature storytelling" in gaming has been riddled with far too much try-hard nonsense, violence, and sex is nevertheless a valid storytelling tool, and it can be utilized effectively to tell gripping narratives. And while Kara no Shoujo lingers on the darker side of things, I still vouch for that brand of storytelling. It's not easy (or common) to find stories that effectively delve into the darkness of the human condition for anything more than shock value. Still, these are valid stories that can help center us and our world views. I don't need to understand it to respect it. Hell, I just might give it a shot.

... Just, y'know...

That'll do it for this week. Presumably, you guys wanna get a head-start on burning some muscle in Street Fighter 6. Or maybe you guys just really, really wanna get back to fiendishly clicking away at Diablo 4. It's a loaded summer for games, that's for sure, and we look forward to covering it for you guys. Don't forget the Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection is out now on Nintendo eShop and Steam; $80 for three of the best dungeon crawlers money can buy! As always: be good to each other, I'll see you in seven.