By Dwaine Bullock Back in 2002 something happened that… let's say upset Dragon Warrior fans. When Dragon Warrior VII was released fans were delighted to flip the manual over and see and ad for the new, Playstation remake of Dragon Warrior IV and the line, "Coming in 2002!" After all, the game had recently been announced in Japan and it was assumed the fan favorite would be next in line. Fans were doing their little happy dances until March '02. Since the official announcement, the flow of news had stopped and the title was mysteriously removed from retailer's databases. Then came the announcement that crushed many heroes, Dragon Warrior IV had been cancelled. Four years later, the game remains a hot topic among fans. So here's the lowdown on what happened and a couple of rumors will be squelched while we're at it. Creator Yuji Horii, designer Akira Toriyama, and composer Koichi Sugiyama have been with the series from the beginning. However, the nuts and bolts of Dragon Quest have been manufactured by a number of contracted development houses. Developers are the guys who take the idea and write the program code that creates the actual game. In the early 8-bit days, Chun Soft handled the programming chores. Dragon Quest V was their last core title, but they still continue to produce the Torneko series. For Dragon Quest VI, Enix hired a company called Heartbeat. They stayed with Enix for some time producing Dragon Quest VI, Dragon Quest III for the Super Famicom, Dragon Quest VII and Dragon Quest IV for the Playstation. Shortly after completing localization work on Dragon Warrior VII, Heartbeat dissolved citing they were taking a break from the video game industry. Problem is; they neglected to inform Enix America until it was too late! Everything on Enix's side, localization staff, PR, etc. was ready to go when they got the news. Needless to say, Enix wasn't very pleased. Dragon Warrior was their core series and many staff members held Dragon Warrior IV as one of their favorite games. They did everything they could to keep the project afloat, but sadly all roads turned out to be dead ends causing them to cancel Dragon Warrior IV. "Why couldn't they hire new programmers?" is the first question that pops up. Heartbeat was the only one that could input the translated text into the game due to their complex code. In 2001, the Playstation was a dying system. Since the Playstation 2 was released in 2000, the platform shift was well underway. Every day that passed was another day the Playstation received less shelf space and dropping prices. Releasing a Playstation game in 2002 with an MSRP of $40 wasn't feasible. If Enix had hired a new programming team, they would've had to learn Heartbeat's code along with translating a very text heavy game. With localization costs and the clock ticking away, it would've been financial suicide. If Enix had hired new programmers by the time it would hit shelves, Enix would have to price it at $10-$20, like the rest of the aging titles. That MSRP wouldn't cover the development and manufacturing costs and it would've killed the company. Many thought Enix was "screwing the fans" but they really did everything they could to deliver us the fan favorite title. It just wasn't possible. If anyone did the screwing, it was Heartbeat. The cancellation has since brought about many rumors and speculation. One states that Dragon Warrior IV was canceled because Dragon Warrior VII did not sell well. That's completely false. If you check out an old DQNN interview, and our on interview with former Enix product manager, Justin Lucas, they mention several times that Dragon Warrior VII was successful and the company was happy with the results. The infamous Yahoo! Japan article was published less than three weeks after the ship date and too early to tell how the title was doing. The numbers reported by The Magic Box were compiled by a small percentage of stores and did not include major retail chains. Probably the most common rumor states that Heartbeat quit because they were upset over not being chosen to program Dragon Quest VIII. That was nothing more than rumors and speculation started on a few message boards and later accepted as fact. After the release of Final Fantasy X, Yuji Horii mentioned in an interview how he wanted to move Dragon Quest in a similar direction. Heartbeat was learning 3D during Dragon Quest VII's development. While the backgrounds were in 3D, the characters were still presented as icons. At the time Heartbeat was not at the level to take the series in the direction Horii wanted. If the members were so upset with Horii and Enix, they wouldn't have continued their relationship. Since the cancellation, some members of Heartbeat formed a new company called Arté Piazza. They continue to develop games for various systems, one of which was Dragon Quest V Reprise for the Playstation 2. If you want to know what they've been up to, be sure to check out this interview RPG Fan with their president. Out of all the mess, it's important to know that Enix America understood how much Dragon Warrior IV meant to the fans. They did everything they could to bring the game stateside and it killed them to cancel it. We can only hope that one day there will be another remake of Dragon Quest IV on another console or handheld so the English speaking fans will finally get to experience the update to one of their favorite entries.