lol McCain

Hey look, I found a decent Dragon Quest Halloween pic...

So anyway, I really don't want to be political on this blog, and I'm not American so it's really none of my business, but this just actually made me lol. I'm sure that most Americans have seen this already so this is for those that haven't along with all the people from other countries that visit this blog.

I don't want to show any preference to either of the Presidential Candidates (though needless to say I'll be downloading that Sarah Palin porno as soon as I hear it's out) so let me put it this way; I'll just leave this here...

Happy Halloween!

To be honest, Halloween isn't really a big deal here in the UK (or in most countries) and the people that most seem to enjoy it are North Americans and Japanese artists, who almost all seem to do Halloween-themed art on this day.

Over here its effects extend merely to the odd group of little kids knocking on your door and asking for sweets and sort of perfunctory appearances in chain shops (like maybe there'll be an offer on horror films or some line will appear in their promotional material such as "Devilishly good discounts this Halloween!")

Unless it's just being misrepresented by obsessives on the internet, it sounds as if in North America it's much more of an event. Over here in the UK, the only public holiday that people really make a fuss about is Christmas Day and New Year's Eve then to a far lesser extent Mothers' Day and Valentine's Day. Fathers' Day isn't seen as such a big event as Mothers' Day (though the greetings card companies are doing their best to change that) and Easter tends to pass without a trace unless you're a kid and get lots of chocolate eggs. Even the day celebrating England's patron saint, St George's Day, can easily pass without most people noticing. That said, the Irish equivalent, St Patrick's Day, seems to go off with more of a bang (and sales of Guinness going through the roof).

Anyway, that's enough of this little cultural exchange. I was looking around for Dragon Quest Halloween art and, to be brutally honest, none of what I found was any good. So I thought, OK, what fits into the following criteria: Halloween, Dragon Quest and this blog? For lack of ghost rape pictures, I decided to go for the DQIII witch (or, er, mage).

Hmm... There's not that many and I'm pretty sure a few of them have already been uploaded via sets. OK, here's some of the better Halloween artwork I've seen today (not DQ-related, sadly).

How's that for a more celebratory amount of images? Yes, some of them only got in because they have cute lolis in... Special mention goes to the next one as it's NSFW so may interest those of you who aren't too bothered about general Halloween-themed images.

DQIX Famitsu article and other DQIX news

The information in this post is all thanks to tummai from the Dragon's Den.

First of all, this Japanese new article at Dengeki Online.

It says you create your own party at Luida's bar (DQIII style), and you can change your characters' classes at the Dharma Shrine whenever you want. Another thing it said that I didn't catch in previous news was that you can change your character's appearance (hair, body, etc) anytime mid-game.

I don't think you can move around the battle field. It says that you give your characters commands in the classic turn-based DQ style and then your characters will "deploy and fight with animations that make it seem like a real battle is taking place". Looks like they are just trying to hype up the flashy animations.

Later, tummai went out and bought Famitsu and scanned the following pages for us.

He explains what each page says:

Nothing really new information-wise.

First page they talk about the trailer shown at the Tokyo Gameshow. They wonder about the tree and the light in the middle of the tree, and they point out that the big tree is located at the top of the floating castle.

Second page they comment on the battle scene movie in the trailer. They say that it appears the priest girl casts a heal spell on the hero and then the wizard girl casts Bikill. They talk a little bit about Luida's bar (nothing new) and they talk a little about the equip screen (use the stylus to drag equipment onto your character, item categories for weapon, shield, helmet, body armor, gloves, pants, boots and accessories. They wonder if the "Lv." at the bottom refers to the character's overall level, or just the level in his current class).

Third page talks a little about the battle system. Traditional turn-based DQ style. Battle scenes are animated with lots of movement to make it look like a real battle is going on.

Fourth page talks about some monsters. They point out that old favorites like drakies, killer machines, golems, goldmen, stonemen, werewolves and druins are in the game as monsters. They also point out the new monster, the "tiger lance" which has the torso of a lion, the legs of a horse and wields a lance. For the drakie/killer machine picture, they also point out that it appears that the party is surrounded and they guess that the enemies were able to attack first.

At the bottom of pages 3 and 4 they have the familiar class artwork, and they guess that they are soldier, wizard, priest, martial artist and thief.

A sharp-eyed member of Dragon's Den, Billy MK, also noted that it looks like the NPCs are sprites, not 3D like the party members.

This feels like it sort of vindicated what I was bitching about before (that DQIX won't look anything like the cutscenes in the trailer and that the game will be pretty constrained on the DS) but it's also kind of sad to see the game go off half-cocked (please don't let that be just British slang so that others can actually understand!) in this way, having to make totally anachronistic compromises with game design.

Minion of a Hero - Sexual Abuse of Maya CG Collection, by Witch Mercenary Team

OK, here's the 2nd set I bought today (well, yesterday technically). This features Maya of DQIV, as you can tell from the title, and features similar situations to the other Witch Mercenary Team CG set I've uploaded. This one also has a bit of anal and tit fucking. No wallpaper this time, though. On a sort of pointless personal note, I would have liked to have seen Meena in this set rather than Maya (even though they're pretty much identical...)

Mediafire download

(Artist's website unknown)

The music I'm listening to

In a rare example of normal blogging taking place here on Dragon Quest Treasures, I've put a special image at the bottom of the blog which tells you what songs I'm currently listening to, if any. I thought it might give a personal touch to the blog. Still, since this is 90% a hentai blog, I've put it at the bottom so it doesn't get in the way of all the tits.

If you're interesting in doing this yourself and don't know how to, may I suggest ViralSound, which is how I do it myself. It can be used in forums as well as blogs or any other website - it just requires a small plug-in for Winamp.

The next CG set by Witch Mercenary Team coming up soon!

CG of a Female Hero, by Witch Mercenary Team

Recently purchased from DLsite. This exclusively focuses on the DQIV heroine though it does have three wallpapers, two of which star other female characters. I have another CG set by this artist that I'll upload soon, featuring Meena and Maya, as well as a DQIV CG set by another artist that I've just bought of DLsite.

The sex is fairly standard stuff: vaginal penetration, blowjob, tit squeezing. Nothing out of the ordinary although the whole thing is forced in the typical hentai way (and bearing in mind that the DQIV hero could kick ass, it's not as if she's some defenceless NPC).

Just because I'm in the mood for it, this post shall see the return of preview images!

Mediafire download

(Artist's website unknown)

Kimi to Tenkuu no Naka, by Cotojikan. DQIX trailer - improved quality.

Wow, that "short break" turned into a huge one. First the birthday weekend got extended into a birthday week and then I ended up helping my friend do work for the local council for the week after that. Everything sort of snowballed and as a result this is only the 3rd time I've been in my own house since the 10th of October.

Well OK then, let's try and get back in track. First of all, in slightly out-of-date news, (read: 5 days old) you can get a better quality DQIX trailer from RPGamer. Better quality but still not great.

OK and now for a new doujinshi. This is by Cotojikan and is based on Dragon Quest V. There's another Cotojikan doujinshi on this blog, one of the most recent uploads, so if you have that you should have a good idea what to expect from this one in terms of artwork and content.

Characters: Bianca with DQV hero

Keywords: Big tits, nipple sucking, breast squeezing, bondage (one omake pic)

Artwork: Detailed, crisp and clear. One full colour pic in addition to the front and back covers.

Mediafire download

Artist's website

Full TGS 2008 DQIX trailer

This is the full trailer for the upcoming Dragon Quest IX, set for a March '09 release date in Japan. It looks nice but then it's running off a dev kit (I mean, check the resolution of it out... It's not 256x192 which is what the DS's screens are).

It seems weirdly cynical for Square Enix to put this on the DS, under the pretence that it's because it will somehow offer a different gaming experience (for a series that has proudly barely changed its gameplay for decades, contradiction #1) and will claim that "graphics don't matter, it's just gameplay" despite the biggest change made to DQVIII being the wonderful graphical upgrade (contradiction #2) and then they go on to make about 70%+ of the trailer cutscenes rather than in-game footage (contradiction #3).

If they really believed that it was gameplay over graphics, why not (a) make larger changes to the gameplay throughout the series rather than just steadily updating the graphics and (b) make the trailer out of 100% on-DS, in-game footage rather than this souped up PC footage which won't look anywhere near that good on an actual DS. It may sound like I'm attacking the DQ franchise as a whole but I think they've just boxed themselves into a corner when it comes to any sort of graphics vs gameplay debate since the gameplay has changed less between DQ and DQVIII than it did between FFX and FFXI, for example. However, the one thing that has changed most is graphics and now they feed us a trailer made mostly from cutscenes - the sort of thing that people may attack FF for.

Anyway, rant over. I'm still really looking forward to this game, I just find the way they're going about it quite annoying.