For as much as we like to bitch and moan about innovation in gaming, sometimes it's just nice to be face-deep in a big ol' nostalgia pie--especially if said pie was almost given to us six years ago and then snatched away without the promise of future pie time. What I'm trying to say with this strained analogy is that the remake of Dragon Quest IV is finally coming to the US on September 16th, and we should all be thankful.
If you're unaware of the scandal behind the Dragon Quest IV remake, it's important to know that we almost got it six years ago; released for the Playstation in Japan, Enix promised to bring the game to the States on the back of the instructions of the US-released Dragon Warrior VII. Unfortunately, Heartbeat, who "programmed" both VII and the IV remake, folded, making the necessary localization re-programming more trouble than it was actually worth. But honestly, Heartbeat's implosion was really for the best; it allowed Enix to pass the game to a much more qualified team (Level 5), and Heartbeat's take on the series kind of buried the magic of Dragon Quest under a load of crummy graphics (even for a game rooted in nostalgia) and sloppy, buggy menus. VII was already a turd of a game, but Heartbeat didn't help matters much.
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