How many dragons? Six? No problem. I can handle six.

Soundtrack Plugin
♫ The Adventure's Beginning

Table of Contents
1. Intro
2. Meet the Heroes
3. True Doom Dragonquestmurderheads
4. The Initial Grind
5. Bencher Misadventures the First
6. The Terror of Nameless Hole
7. The Creatures Known as Dragons
8. The First Hunt
9. Cleaning House
10. Jeff Rides Alone (if you don't count the three other chicks)
11. Dan clears out a forest in like half an hour
12. Dragon murder resumes

Guild queue
Old Words That Mean Something Nobody Needs to Talk About 1

Oh goodness. If this is for real I'm excited.

If it's not he's banned forever.

Man they really changed a lot in Dragon Quest 7 DS, didn't they? Even the logo! Wow!

So is there going to be a bunch of Sagas to different Kingdoms to slay each Dragon? If so, be my Guest.


Seven.

bigger screenshots plox

... I'm watching you, dosboot. I'm watching you.

Seriously though, what do I have to sacrifice to who to get it localized?

I increased the image size by 150% but I'm not too happy with the outcome. I prefer the smaller, sharper ones, but what can you do.

Does anyone have the soundtrack to this game? I can't upload it myself due to Japan's new copyright infringement laws but if someone else has it or can host files I make, I would really appreciate it. This game has such great music it's a shame to leave it out.

Don't upscale by 150%; the result will be blurry. Upscale by 200% and you'll get nice, crisp pixels. I'm sure there are detailed instructions in the Tech Thread.

200% was friggin' huge both in kb and size and still look like shit. I'll put 'em up but I think they look best unscaled.

If the image has important information at the level of individual pixels, which low-resolution game screenshots almost always do, then there's no way to upscale by 150% without making it look like shit.

Scale it up to 200% using the nearest-neighbor algorithm and optimize it, or leave it at 100%. 512 pixels wide is by no means too big, and with nearest-neighbor scaling it's reasonable to expect all but the most complex screenshots to be well under 100kb, which is not too large.

My crack team of ping surgeons is working tirelessly through the night to bring you satisfaction!

♫ The Castle of the Hero King, Kazan
So just what is 7th Dragon, anyway?

There are people called "Huntsmen."

To make a long story short, 7th Dragon is a DS RPG made in 2009 by imageepoch with help from Kazuya Niinou, Rieko Kodama, and Yuzu Koshiro.


They fearlessly travel the world, living by their own ideals.

You might have read Kazuya Niinou's name in the credits of Trauma Center and Etrian Odyssey. Yuzu Koshiro is a legend amongst video game composers.

In case you haven't heard of Rieko Kodama, her name is associated with Phantasy Star and Sonic the Hedgehog. You might also be familiar with Skies of Arcadia.


Our setting is a country on the eastern continent called Kazan. Many Huntsmen gather here.

7th Dragon was released in Japan on March 5, 2009. Other RPGs released for the DS around this time include Chrono Trigger DS, Dragon Quest V, Avalon Code, and Suikoden Tierkreis.

7th Dragon, however, never saw a release in English.


Some of these men burn with lofty ideals while others merely seek fame and fortune. There are also those who fight for justice.

At first glance, 7th Dragon is pretty similar to Etrian Odyssey. It abandons the classic first-person perspective for something a few years more modern, but preserves many of the design sensibilities that made Etrian Odyssey a hit.

I never did get around to playing Etrian Odyssey II, but I like to imagine it and 7th Dragon represent the destinations of two paths on a forked road. Sister-sequels, if you will.


Today, yet another youth has appeared at the gates of Kazan.

I've read before that the game never made the jump because it was coded in such a way as to make localization an impossible task. Others have speculated its licensing fee was too high. Another theory is that by the time it was available, pirate chips had already damaged the market too much to make it a viable release.


This youth has yet to grasp his ultimate objective.

Still, in Japan it sold about one hundred thousand new copies when it was released, which is enough for a Japanese publisher to allow a sequel.


But no matter his destination, what awaits him there is anybody's guess.

I've played the sequel, or at least half of it. It did not have the spirit or the vision of its predecessor.


But, there's nothing to be afraid of! Go forward and open the door to the unknown!

I'd say it's a real damn shame this one never made the leap abroad.

Next: Meet the Heroes

God damn it TK these images are way too fucking big

what are you trying to do break my eyes

It would be super cool if everyone could STFU about image sizes.

I'd forgotten how pretty this game is. The ultimate evolution of 2D, 8-bit, super-deformed sprites.

This is wonderful, thanks for doing this TK. I'd really love to play this game, but under the current circumstances a LP is the next best thing.

I suspect I'll need to hear more about the actual gameplay to determine whether I'd want to play this or not (I never played Etrian Odyssey), but I am totally down with an LP, given that I don't read Japanese so I couldn't play this even if I wanted to.

I think the bigger images look great!

I'm not 100% sure, but infraview might be able to resize the images in a big batch. It can definitely double the size of images without the compression, but you would need to play around with the batch options to see if it could do a whole set of images at once.

Looking forward to this LP!

- Eddie

Yeah Irfanview has a batch resizer.

I was just joking about the big images calm down everyone

eddie

calm down

Each screenshot is actually a photograph taken of a painted artwork by tkflashes screenshot elves.

Having heard so many great things about this game and yet being unable to read Japanese, this LP is the closest I'll likely come to experiencing the game. Very excited to see what all the fuss is about!

Yeah don't worry about it. The images are under control.

Hey guys pick a name for the guild. You got until the next update or else I am going to name it Slam and Jam like I always do.

We can use English or Japanese characters. 8 of them. SUPER MEGA ULTRA BONUS POINTS if you make a particularly entertaining English-Japanese bilingual pun. You get the ultimate prize: the chance to make a character for the party.

Nutsy

Team Chucklenuts We R BBQ

The Legitimate Businessmen

EDIT: Only 8 chars huh?

Donkies!

KFC!

Or: KFH (Kentucky Fried Huntsman)

El Spite, to maintain consistency with Etrian Odyssey.