Dragon Quest 9 has been trapped on the Nintendo DS for 17 years, and franchise creator Yuji Horii was "a little disheartened" to learn fans never wanted that
Dragon Quest 9 was a Nintendo DS exclusive when it launched in 2009 – and it technically still is. Square Enix never set the RPG free, despite many of its fans' appetite for a remake, and it seems franchise creator Yuji Horii isn't worried about it – possibly because he's still hurting from fans' reactions to the DS game 17 years ago.
The RPG's emperor recently spoke to Japanese site Famitsu as Dragon Quest celebrated its 40th anniversary; Nintendo Everything translated a chunk of Horii's interview. In it, he discusses fans' response to Dragon Quest 9 being a Nintendo DS exclusive after experiencing the visual splendor of the first completely 3D Dragon Quest, Dragon Quest 8, in 2004. Their response was… not good.
"It made for interesting gameplay," Horii says about the Nintendo DS, "and I thought everyone would be surprised, but when we announced it, we had a lot of criticism, like 'What? On Nintendo DS?' At the time we were actually a little disheartened."
He explains that Square Enix was motivated to lock Dragon Quest 9 to the DS because its developers wanted "quick and easy play over local networks." He says that, "At that time there were not many games using local networks and it was difficult to do so. But with Nintendo DS, the moment you turn the power on you can connect with people."
Fans had been preparing themselves for Dragon Quest 9 to launch on technology with some muscle, the PS3 or Wii, maybe, as a contemporaneous Nintendo Life article suggests. So their jaws dropped through the floor and straight into Hell once Square Enix made the unprecedented announcement that, no, Dragon Quest 9 will be bound to the petite DS.
Forum discussions from around Dragon Quest 9's release reveal players' vitriol for the cute DS which I believe is innocent in all of this; it's not the console's fault it was made to be whimsical handheld and not a prehistoric Steam Deck. One 17-year-old thread on GameFAQs features players calling Dragon Quest 9 "really horrible" and "extremely boring."
But, with time, public sentiment started turning around. User Liamland says on a 12-year-old GameFAQs thread, "After playing [Dragon Quest 8] on the PS2, it would seem as if [Dragon Quest 9] on the NDS was a step down, from a graphics and sound standpoint. But ultimately the DLC content, multiplayer tag mode, and character flexibility of DQIX makes it arguably a better game than DQVIII."
"We thought that was an amazing system, and decided we wanted to make Dragon Quest 9 using that ability," Horii tells Famitsu. So Fans have grown to agree with him – though, they'd still really like it to be at least a little more free from the Nintendo DS.
"Is there any hope?" asks one Reddit thread wondering about the likelihood of a Dragon Quest 9 remake. The answer is, probably not – Square Enix has never spoken of it despite fans' incessant screams. After all this time, Dragon Quest 9's developers continue to be chased by the same problem: no one really wants Dragon Quest 9 to be exclusive to the Nintendo DS, and they never did.