Dragon Quest IV #07

Why in the world is the title screen
so freakin' red anyway?!

I'm back~! Now what the hell was I doing?

Before I really get into this, I just happened to go ahead and change my DS's system language to take a peak at the French and Spanish. Turns out, in both of the alternate translations they replaced all the Rs and Ns in the dialogue of the "Russian" characters with Cyrillic Яs and Иs, which makes just no dang sense if you pronounce them correctly, but at least they don't get the hokey accent that we got in English. ^_^

...Wow, my last post on this game was last year?! Anyhow, heading south from Frenor to the Travel Door we now have access to Endor. Alena and her friends wheesh away to a new continent! Some guy on the other side can't find the Travel Door leading back to Santeem, and we don't tell him it's outside because we're jealous of his manly moustaches and sexy eyebrows. On the DS, he says it leads somewhere called Maestral, which is apparently the name of Alena's home continent? It's not clear here, but the Internet says so. South to Endor!

Brey eats a massive hit from a Rogue Knight just two steps away from town, losing exactly as many HP as he has. Plop Drop Dead. Followed by Alena, once I get Upper cast on her. Cristo runs away like a cat from a bath, seeing a busted bridge on the way. Bridges belong to everyone; please take care not to destroy it! Meanwhile, on the PS, our heroes are brutally slain by a pack of Pteradons.

Let's look around Endor! The guy in the southwesternmost building wants to sell his shop, but not to us; we don't have the savvy! In the remakes we can read a letter from his daughter, Mona. Inside the castle, and out through a hole in the west wall, there is a basement containing some Lifeforce Nuts. Yummm~! A girl on a rooftop in the northeast notes that the clouds are blowing swiftly to the west (or, at night, sees a shooting star)! What could it mean?!

Inside the castle, it seems the tournament that is starting is meant to gather strong people, and as a bonus the winner gets to marry the princess! Woohoo! But we get no princess-on-princess action, for it is revealed that a woman winning nullifies the promise of marriage. Of course we know who wins, right? But the people don't; they're worried she'll end up married to some Necrosaro guy who's beating everyone. In Japanese, his name is given as デスピサロ [desupisaro]; in other words, "Death Pisaro." Sure, necro- means the same thing, but daaaang, that's menacing. (The DS gets "Psaro the Manslayer" instead. Now, are we to pronounce this as "Saro" or "P-Saro"?) Wait, didn't Ragnar...?! The king, when we speak to him, admires our "concern over this doomed world"—huh what? I thought no one really knew about the bad moon rising? Maybe I've forgotten something in the last four months.

To the coliseum! Did I spell that right? Yeah. Cool! In a shop inside we find the Iron Claw for sale, an insane weapon for Alena. Buy twelve!—No, just buy one. Or you could get lucky and win one from a Skeleton. Going up the stairs here begins the tournament! First, we go back to the casino and—what. Why in the world did...well, it is Nintendo of America in the '90s, after all. The U.S. version removed the casino girls' bunny ears. Anyway, let's spend all of our money on casino tokens, which will carry over to Chapter Five. This is the cheapest time to do so, and it's the most effective way to make use of Alena's money. If you're lucky (or if you know how to reset when you lose), I've found that the Monster Arena is a very effective way to have your coins make little coin babies, at least when you can CHEAT. The poker table is okay; the slots are nearly useless, even when you find the "good" one.

Now, let me tell you something about me and video game casinos: I LOATHE VIDEO GAME CASINOS. It's the one place I'll cheat in a game without a second thought. I mean, come on; playing the DS cart legit, it took five days just to win enough for the Meteorite Armband. It's actually easier in the NES-U version though, since in every other version you can only bet up to 10 coins at a time on poker rather than up to 100 (plus, you know, the cheating). On a side note, the fanfare for winning big is ridiculously elaborate!...and the same fanfare we'll hear later at the tourney. Anyway, on NES-U, I get enough for a Meteorite Armband and I also try out a Staff of Jubilation, which makes a monster stop and smile for a moment in battle. That's...actually not too bad an effect in desperate times. Oh, and I got a couple of Metal Babble Shields, too, except in the remakes where they're not available yet.

Okay, back to the cheating. While playing on the PS version, I found out The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard. When saving states to take advantage of the cards, I discovered that not only had the computer already decided which cards would come up next (exactly as expected), it had also already decided which one of those cards I was going to choose (what in the why would you do that). The NES versions did not act this way at all. The Monster Arena is definitely the way to go on the PS. Three bets, 53,000 Coins, Meteorite Armbands for everyone, and we're done.

On to the tournament! Super simple stuff here; Alena is not a character with a lot of strategic depth in battle when she's solo. Smack stuff till it falls and heal yourself before you do. Linguar, the fifth battle, is a little different with the mirages, but not very. After five opponents go down, they call out Necrosaro!...who isn't there anymore. He defaults and Alena wins! She marries the princess—er, the princess no longer has to marry! But she wishes Alena were a man. Since sex-change operations have not been invented in-universe and the princess won't admit to being bi-curious, we leave it at that and head back to Santeem to tell dad. But outside Endor Castle, a guard ambushes us! He says to return to Santeem immediately, then gasps and...vanishes. Did he die? or just disappear? We can't tell from here, so let's go home! On the other hand, in the remakes he's decidedly less sprightly, and on the PS actually falls to the ground before vanishing, so I think the implication is that he actually did die. Anyone's guess, really; I'm not sure Alena knows.

At Santeem Castle, we are eerily greeted with no music, and no people, just the cat from the roof upstairs meowing plaintively. What could have happened here?! FIN. Next time, everyone's favorite merchant!

Name Changes
NES (U)	NES (J)	NDS (U)	PS (J)
* denotes an entry which was not significantly changed from the previous version in the same language. Blank entries either have not appeared yet or were not named in that version.
Atlas
		Maestral (Alena's home continent)
Who's Who
Necrosaro	デスピサロ [desupisaro]	Psaro the Manslayer	*
		King Norman
		Princess Veronica (nickname: Ronnie)	モニカ [monika]
		Mona
Boss Rush
Hun	ミスター　ハン [misutā han]	Attila the Hunk	*
Roric	ラゴス [ragosu]	Quick Draw McGore	*
Vivian	ビビアン [bibian]	Prima Donna	*
Sampson	サイモン [saimon]	Samson Knight	*
Linguar	ベロリンマン [berorinman]	Abominable Showman	*
Spellbook
Snowstorm	ヒャダルコ [hyadaruko]	Crackle	*