Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen

Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen
Also known as: Dragon Quest IV: Michibikareshi Monotachi (JP) Developers: ArtePiazza, Cattle Call Publisher: Square Enix Platform: Nintendo DS Released in JP: November 22, 2007 Released in US: September 16, 2008 Released in EU: September 12, 2008 Released in AU: September 11, 2008 This game has unused areas. This game has debugging material. This game has regional differences.

The DS Dragon Quest IV came after the PlayStation remake localization fell through. Worldwide, fans who could finally experience the fourth Dragon Quest title...minus half the script from the Japanese version.

Debug Room

There is a debug room, similar to the one found in the DS Dragon Quest V, hidden inside the ROM. It can be accessed through Action Replay code 22187924 00000002 (Europe).

It consists of a house interior. There is a healing spot, only two damaging floors (as opposed to the many in the fifth game's debug room) a raft and a freaking ship taking you to an "island" of sorts, and stairs taking you to a dungeon-like room but with two non-working doors, yet you can go down the stairs (but not up). One of the ropes leads to an upper floor, with a strangely-shaped conveyor belt. There are also two locked doors (the right one takes you outside) and another door at the far right taking you to a small room. And a bunch of non-functioning NPCs.

There are also some pitfalls and a second rope, which takes you to an exterior area with loads of NPCs. Unlike the fifth game, some still have coding, mainly testing camera and NPC scripting (although messages were deleted). There are two NPCs behaving like Church priests, and Item Shop owners. An out-of-place mist is in the center. A well can take you back to the previous room.

Debug Mode Leftovers

Movie Recorder

A debug routine left in the game which can be activated through Action Replay code 94000130 FFF70000 127FFFA8 00000C00 D2000000 00000000 (Japan). It is similar to the "Movie Recording" feature found in emulators: press Start to begin recording your button input, then Select to stop recording. If you press B + Start, it will reproduce your key inputs.

This is all quite odd, considering the game doesn't have an attract mode.

Early Localization

Amazingly enough, the Japanese version already had a partial localization in all five languages of the European version, which is uncommon with RPGs. To access them in the Japanese version, use Action Replay code 02106404 0000000? where "?" is 1-5 (0 being Japanese text).

The prologue isn't translated, however, while the translation itself is reminiscent of the NES version and not in a good way – most noticeably, the Party Convos are also missing in this early translation state.

On a related note, the Japanese language option is still in the American and European version, just not available in the language select.

The name for the immigrant town was somehow left untranslated in the American version. You can see this at the very end game when the mysterious immigrant comes out of the picture. When it asks to invite him, it uses the Japanese name of the immigrant town in Japanese characters.

Timestamps

To do: JP/EU/AU

A file named "date.dtd" is located both in the root of the file system and in a directory named DATE. It contains the following timestamp:

2006/04/27
16:44:31

Another file named "map.dtd" in the DATE directory has an earlier timestamp:

2006/08/04
11:06:20

Regional Differences

The Party Talk feature (the party members commenting about ongoing events, much like the Skits in the Tales series) was removed from all non-Japanese versions, and as a result Dragon Quest IV was left with about 55% of the text it originally had. Due to massive fan outcry, this wasn't repeated with the subsequent DS games, and the mobile port of Dragon Quest IV reinstates the feature.