The wait is over! We finally have details on the next Dragon Quest game and things have certainly gone an interesting direction. It’s titled Dragon Quest X Mezameshi Itsutsu no Shuzoku Online which already seems to have translations ranging from Andriasang’s The Five Awakening Races to 1up’s Rise of the Five Tribes.

The important word, though, is “online”. Dragon Quest X will evolve the ideas established in the previous game by allowing you to play with a customized character teamed up with several friends online. This includes cross-platform multiplayer between players on both the Wii and the freshly announced Wii U version. In addition to this, there will also be some kind of 3DS connectivity which seems to be in the brainstorming phase.

There are certainly a lot of “firsts” at play here as you will be able to create a non-human main character for the first time ever. As the subtitle suggests, you’ll be able to create characters of various different races and tribes. Dragon Quest X is also the first in the series to be developed internally by Square-Enix, with past games being developed by companies such as Level-5 and Chun Soft. Yuji Hori (designer), Koichi Sugiyama (composer) and Akira Toriyama (character designer) will still maintain their established roles. with Yosuke Saito (NieR) heading up development.

Character and world proportions are once again one-to-one as they were in Dragon Quest VIII. No more squat, chibi style adult characters are seen (other than some of the non-human races shown).

Battles show characters moving freely while engaging monsters and teamwork is highly emphasized. Some sort of crafting system was also shown, though this should come as no surprise to anyone that has followed the series.

The game will be available (in Japan) next year, though Hori mentioned some will get the chance to play it early in a beta test (of which details will come at a later time). Monthly fees are also currently unconfirmed, though a section for “usage fee” with the contents “TBA” does exist on the game’s spec sheet.

While you wait for more details to surface, here is the game’s first official screenshot:

Update: Here is the trailer shown in the stream courtesy of Nintendo Everything:

This video shows off character creation and some battles:

And here is some additional footage showing off some of the vistas and other aspects:

Source: Ustream with translations via 1up and Andriasang and video from Nintendo Everything

Hopefully you cast “Read On,” because it sounds like NEStalgia creator, Ben Mallahan, has made something really special. Described as “Dragon Warrior 3 meets World of Warcraft,” NEStalgia combines all the charm of 8bit RPGs with the MMO genre.

More than just a superficial hybrid, the game also brings the turn based mechanics of old school RPGs into an MMO setting. You can team up with a party of other players across one of the available small scale servers or fight each other in some PvP battles. There’s even an auction house where you can trade your epic loot between other players.

Best of all, NEStalgia is completely free to play. Of course, if you want to show your support to the game, you can sign up for a $9 annual subscription or $20 lifetime subscription that unlocks four additional character classes and a few other optional features. Either way, the world of NEStalgia is just a download away.

News Credit: Joystiq
Official Site: SilkGames.com/NEStalgia/

Do you guys remember Captain Caveman?

On a very special thirty-first episode of “Barrel Roll! A Video Game Podcast”, Wes asks that thought provoking question. Sadly, we are too busy talking about PAX Pox, our first PAX giveaway, and random gaming nonsense to pay it much attention.

None of us have been playing as much this week compared to normal, but Jesse did find time to start his play-through of the excellent 2D action/RPG: Muramasa, Wes has been obsessing over his iPhone games, and Jonah… well let’s just say his band of Hobbits is just getting off the ground.

We also see the return of “Let’s Play Together”, our segment that focuses on multiplayer games. Jesse and Jonah played co-op through the newly released Contra: ReBirth and give their thoughts on what it takes to be a manly Contra man.

In the news we discuss NIS’s decision to release discounted version of their PSP games on the Playstation Network (for a limited time), the possibility of a new HD 2D Sonic the Hedgehog game actually being good, and a whole lot more. There is even a brief Mega Man News Roundup.

We also take a little bit of time to reminisce about our favorite console, The Dreamcast, in honor of our big Dreamcast retrospective day.

All this an a whole lot more on the latest episode.

Download

RSS

iTunes

Show Links:
Outro Music – “Fortuna (Star Fox)” by The OneUps

2D, HD Sonic
Reading Rainbow
Metroid Metal