While Siliconera couldn’t be at the Dragon Quest IX launch event at the Nintendo World Store in New York City, reader Tommy Lee could, and he was awesome enough to mail in with some quick impressions of the event.
From what we can tell, it was a fairly well-received launch. Tommy writes:
“So, I went to the Dragon Quest IX launch event at the Nintendo World Store. I didn’t manage to get there early enough to get Horii’s autograph. Someone told me that people started lining up for the event starting 7 AM and the line start growing pretty fast at 8 AM.
I got there at 10:40 and there were about 100-150 people ahead of me. At around 11:15, Horii showed up and people were chanting his name as he walked into the store. By noon, there were about 750-1,000 people lined up. It pretty much looked like it took up 3/4 of a city block. Around that time, Ichimura waved at the people in the line. I should mention as a side note that either he was looking for a way in, or checking out how long the line was a little before Horii showed up. If I didn’t watch the Iwata Asks section, I wouldn’t have known it was him, since he wore some casual clothing.
At 1 PM,. they let in the first 30 people, and then, after that, they let 5-6 people every 2-3 minutes. In the plaza right outside the door, they were giving out free shirts and posters. There were also 6 or 7 stations for multiplayer “demos” with employees playing the host at each station. “Demos” because they were actual copies of the game; the employees were reminding people not to save. The hosts let everyone into treasure dungeons with tough monsters and a punishing boss. After you played a (difficult) session, they gave you a ticket where you could obtain free blue Italian ices from an ice-cream truck. Of course, it wasn’t actual slime ice-cream, but it the closest Mr Softee (the local ice-cream truck company) could do.
I have some pictures but they’re not great because there were guards everywhere and I doubt I could have gotten good shots without being berated. There’s also the fact that all I had was a 5-year old cellphone.
There was an actual photography crew going around so I guess keep an eye out for the pictures. Also, the male host of Nintendo Week was going around interviewing people at the event.”
You can check out a couple more pictures of the event from Tommy below. While the NPD Group aren’t as forthcoming with numbers as Media-Create and Enterbrain are, perhaps we’ll find out how well Dragon Quest did overseas in Square Enix or Nintendo’s next financial reports.
