|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Dustin Hubbard and Dwaine Bullock
For some reason 10 years ago, I stumbled upon Enix's Japanese site. From there I browsed their game library and saw the Dragon Quest series and remembered reading in Nintendo Power that that series was the same thing as Dragon Warrior. "Man they had cooler boxes." I remember thinking. The Dragon Warrior games were always my favorite series but we're so bloody hard to find, I was only able to rent 2 and 3, and never could find a copy of 4 to even rent let alone buy. I decided to do more research on this, so I popped upon a web browser to look up Dragon Warrior and Dragon Quest... I couldn't find squat that wasn't in Japanese. Then it hit me, I could have the first American website dedicated to Dragon Warrior. I had a bit of Frontpage knowledge so I jumped into that and started working. At the time I think the only Dragon Warrior ROMS that were out were 1 and 2 so... I grabbed some screen shots of Dragon Warrior 2 and threw up a basic web page describing it on my AOL web space. The foundation had been built, though it was ugly as hell.
(Many links still work!)Over the next few days I browsed Japanese sites, collecting what little information and screen shots I could of Dragon Quest 5, 6, and the recent release of Dragon Quest 3 Remix. I threw that stuff on there and started to become obsessed with the series again, there was so much unknown to me and I'm sure countless other Dragon Warrior fans. I had to find more information! The page grew into as many sections as I could create and started attracting visitors. The first two people I remember working a lot with and sharing information with were Nick Marcotte and Darkniciad. Nick had some 4 Koma's with some cool artwork as well as Dai No Daibouken info, Darkniciad worked with me on the site adding more information and Midis from his own site. We even had a logo contest for my site which gathered about 6 or 7 entries, which were cool. Despite the new logo, the site was still hella ugly!
The community continued to blossom, all of the early webmasters of Dragon Quest sites were pretty close and shared information and what not regularly. Eventually ZHeights came along and setup a WWWBoard for me, which was quite popular at the time. Finally we could all sit around and discuss the series and what not together. I was actually updating the site quite regularly with information that was given to me, screen shots, and I even acquired 13 episodes of the original Dragon Warrior cartoon, and finally copies of Dragon Warrior 3 and 4. Fanfiction, FAQs, and fanart were being created by many of us in the community. Darkniciad created a new design that was better than mine so the site wasn't quite so ugly anymore though the black background still remained. OJuice and I even started an IRC channel that many regular contributors and key people of the community met up in and chatted in regularly. I really feel like this was the renaissance of the online DW/DQ community.
A website at dragonquest.net appeared! Command? The site was a nicer design than I had seen on any other website. I can't remember if this was before I had met Dwaine or not. The webmaster and I began talking along with other webmasters and we thought it would be a cool idea to combine all our sites and information into one central site for all things DW/DQ related. We pooled some money together and sent it to the webmaster of this site... who promptly disappeared without a trace! We'd been had! Who knows what path the Shrine would've taken if this had gone through... maybe it was a blessing in disguise.
Shortly after this, I believe Dwaine created an Anime/Manga resource that looked very nice at the time. My site lacked much information on that, so I contacted Dwaine seeing if he'd be interested in combining websites. He accepted and thank God he did because the Shrine would've crumbled without his support. He started working on a revision of the Shrine right away, which was unveiled in 99 or 00... I can't remember exactly but it looked great. Unfortunately and probably stupidly I took the shrine down for this period of time. It basically killed the WWWBoard and I lost a lot of visitors. But when it was reopened with Dwaine's new design everyone loved it, and the black background was no more!
Years passed and Enix came back into the picture releasing Dragon Warrior Monsters through Eidos, and then reopening their American offices to release DWM 2, Torneko, and DW 7. Life was good and they were being active with us in the community. Eventually, Pendy (DW/DQ News Network), Endwin (Maintainer of Alefgard and the Message Boards), Dwaine, and I were flown to LA in 2002 to actually meet up with Enix's president. It was an amazing honor and it was very cool to meet those guys in person and hang out with them. Looking back I can't believe I did that flying out alone to a city I had no idea how to navigate through to stay with 2 guys I had never met in a hotel room. Luckily everything went rather smoothly. The greatest moment was when talking with Paul (Enix's President) he told us our sites definately made a difference and were a big part of Enix coming back to America. It was a big honor and made it all worthwhile.
Unfortunately, not too long after this Enix canceled Dragon Warrior 4 Remix, and we felt that familiar dread that we were missing out yet again on a great Dragon Quest title. Not long after this, Enix America's staff was let go because of the Square-Enix merger and Dwaine and I's requests to the new management went largely ignored. This really kinda devastated my hopes for the series and I began to let my contributions to the Shrine stagnant, since I felt we would likely not see anymore games from the series. Dwaine kept the faith though and continued to update the Shrine with the little information and such that came out. This period is where I have to give credit where credit is due and the Shrine basically became Dwaine's. I couldn't have left it to a better person though. Despite this, Dwaine continues to work with me and ask for approval on the Shrine, it's been a great partnership really and I can't thank him enough for all his hard work.
Now we know that Square-Enix is beginning to spend some focus on the series with Dragon Quest 8, Rocket Slime, and hopefully we'll get DQM Joker and DQ 9. Progress is also being made on a fan translation of DQ 5 for PS2 as we speak. Things are bright for the community, and the shrine! I want to thank all of you for your support and contributions through the years. Dwaine and I appreciate it immensely and enjoy getting fanart, and letters, and questions. I've made many friends through this site, and thought I may not speak to them much anymore I miss them all and hope they're doing well. The DW/DQ community is like family to me. Thanks and shoutouts have to be given, I hope I'm not forgetting anyone but probably am as there's just so many... please don't feel offended if I left you out. Thanks to OJuice, Neil, AWJ, Mage Slime, Woodus, Darkniciad, Nick Marcotte, ZHeights, Zenithia, Endwin, Pendy, Evans, Brainwave, KiTA, Jjukil, Spinner8, and many many others. You guys have
helped the community and shrine in various ways, and I thank you for it!Just like Erdrick passed on his stuff to his descendant, the shrine has changed hands from myself to Dwaine, I hope he can someday pass it on to somebody else as well and we can see the shrine hit it's 50th anniversary as crazy as that sounds. Please keep visiting and keep supporting us, send in your fan works, post on the message boards, keep the love for the series going. Thank you all again, take care and tempt not the fates. ;)
- Dustin Hubbard
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
