Dragon Quest IX is by no means a crippled game here in the U.S. It has proved compelling and addictive to countless players stateside, providing a wealth of single-player content that has driven some to bury their faces in their Nintendo DS systems for close to a hundred hours. I've not got quite that many on my clock, as I'm still a reasonable distance from the main endgame let alone the post-game content, but it's definitely proving to be a worthy purchase.
And yet, something went missing when it crossed the Pacific; a key design point, as I understand it. The feature is still there, of course, but it just plain doesn't work in our sparsely-populated country. That feature is Dragon Quest IX's implementation of Tag Mode, known as "canvassing for guests" in-game, and it, combined with Japan's well-known love for all things Dragon Quest, made headlines.
A quick run-down for the uninitiated: Dragon Quest IX's canvassing fires up the wireless radio in your Nintendo DS, sending out beacons into the air while listening for beacons from other systems with the same game, in the same mode. If two systems hear each other, they link up and exchange a little bit of data, all with no intervention from you or the other player—you won't even realize it's happened, most likely, until you open up your DS and see that it has. In Dragon Quest IX, this exchange of data results in the other player's hero taking up residence in an inn in your game, and he can optionally bring along one of the game's randomly-generated treasure maps. (A few of these maps have achieved legendary status, mostly for the types of enemies that inhabit them.)
It's certainly not for my lack of trying that I haven't managed a single passer-by tag. In my hometown—the second-biggest city in my state, but still not really a mecca of Dragon Quest fans—I've brought my DS to malls, game stores, you name it. There were some GameStop events last Saturday, where I might have actually run into some players, but I was unfortunately out of town at the time. (I hear that there were a number of cheaters at those events, though, offering hacked-up treasure maps; these tags, I really don't care to have.) But even given events like this, it doesn't change that random passerby tagging just isn't happening.
Being the nerd that I am, I began to wonder if there might be some technological solutions to the problem. Short of releasing a new version of the game to fans who already bought it—which wouldn't carry their save data—there's obviously no way Nintendo or Square-Enix can update Dragon Quest IX to allow this data exchange online. They could, though, conceivably make a new DSiWare or WiiWare title that could link up to the already-released game, simulating a tag. They could also build up "relay stations," like they did in Japan for Nintendogs as that game's popularity waned and chance passings became slim, that would save the data from one passerby in memory and pass it on to the next.
It occurred to me, though, that there was actually something I could do. I knew several other Dragon Quest IX players, and many of us had access to devices we could use to back up and restore our saves. So what I did was dust off my old classic DS, get a hold of a second copy of Dragon Quest IX, had people send me their save files over the Internet, wrote them to that second copy, tagged the two, and sent them back their modified save. Over and over. Slowly, my inn has been filling up with both dear friends and passing acquaintances—it just added a second level, actually—many carrying treasure maps that I've packed away for later tackling. (Still working on the original I received in-game, actually.)
I can't try the real-time multiplayer mode that Dragon Quest IX offers with this or any other strategy, but I don't really need to; it's been enough to provide me with some neat bonuses and a little bit of a sense of community playing a game that really is, at its core, still mostly a compelling single-player experience—but now I get a taste of what helped make it so popular overseas. As a bonus, in the process of all this, I was able to tag over the legendary Masayuki map as well.
It'll just be awhile before I'm a high enough level to try it out.
And yet, something went missing when it crossed the Pacific; a key design point, as I understand it. The feature is still there, of course, but it just plain doesn't work in our sparsely-populated country. That feature is Dragon Quest IX's implementation of Tag Mode, known as "canvassing for guests" in-game, and it, combined with Japan's well-known love for all things Dragon Quest, made headlines.
A quick run-down for the uninitiated: Dragon Quest IX's canvassing fires up the wireless radio in your Nintendo DS, sending out beacons into the air while listening for beacons from other systems with the same game, in the same mode. If two systems hear each other, they link up and exchange a little bit of data, all with no intervention from you or the other player—you won't even realize it's happened, most likely, until you open up your DS and see that it has. In Dragon Quest IX, this exchange of data results in the other player's hero taking up residence in an inn in your game, and he can optionally bring along one of the game's randomly-generated treasure maps. (A few of these maps have achieved legendary status, mostly for the types of enemies that inhabit them.)
It's certainly not for my lack of trying that I haven't managed a single passer-by tag. In my hometown—the second-biggest city in my state, but still not really a mecca of Dragon Quest fans—I've brought my DS to malls, game stores, you name it. There were some GameStop events last Saturday, where I might have actually run into some players, but I was unfortunately out of town at the time. (I hear that there were a number of cheaters at those events, though, offering hacked-up treasure maps; these tags, I really don't care to have.) But even given events like this, it doesn't change that random passerby tagging just isn't happening.
Being the nerd that I am, I began to wonder if there might be some technological solutions to the problem. Short of releasing a new version of the game to fans who already bought it—which wouldn't carry their save data—there's obviously no way Nintendo or Square-Enix can update Dragon Quest IX to allow this data exchange online. They could, though, conceivably make a new DSiWare or WiiWare title that could link up to the already-released game, simulating a tag. They could also build up "relay stations," like they did in Japan for Nintendogs as that game's popularity waned and chance passings became slim, that would save the data from one passerby in memory and pass it on to the next.
It occurred to me, though, that there was actually something I could do. I knew several other Dragon Quest IX players, and many of us had access to devices we could use to back up and restore our saves. So what I did was dust off my old classic DS, get a hold of a second copy of Dragon Quest IX, had people send me their save files over the Internet, wrote them to that second copy, tagged the two, and sent them back their modified save. Over and over. Slowly, my inn has been filling up with both dear friends and passing acquaintances—it just added a second level, actually—many carrying treasure maps that I've packed away for later tackling. (Still working on the original I received in-game, actually.)
I can't try the real-time multiplayer mode that Dragon Quest IX offers with this or any other strategy, but I don't really need to; it's been enough to provide me with some neat bonuses and a little bit of a sense of community playing a game that really is, at its core, still mostly a compelling single-player experience—but now I get a taste of what helped make it so popular overseas. As a bonus, in the process of all this, I was able to tag over the legendary Masayuki map as well.
It'll just be awhile before I'm a high enough level to try it out.