This Week In Retro: Slime Morimori Dragon Quest 3

November 2, 2011: We're going to need a bigger slime

by Diamond Feit

This is one of the hardest columns I've had to write. I'm a positive person by choice (because I've lived my life the other way and I know it does not work), but this week's topic is an unfortunate tale of failure. When I pick a subject for This Week In Retro, I don't always have the luxury of choosing my favorite game or movie; I just strive to find the one relevant item that will spark the most discussion. Sometimes that allows me to celebrate a famous work, sometimes I have to champion a forgotten piece of history, and on occasion I've even had to condemn a thing that should not exist. Yet this week, I'm stuck lauding one of my favorite games that, despite its commercial pedigree, tanked at retail and sank into oblivion, dragging its entire "franchise" with it.

Esteemed readers/listeners, I am here today to tell the tale of Slime Morimori Dragon Quest 3.

While I'm supremely confident most Retronauts fans have personal experiences with the Dragon Quest series, given both its popularity and significance in the history of the role-playing genre, I'm just as certain that few English-speaking people know what "Slime Morimori" is. We can start with the basics: "Slime" is exactly what it sounds like—a famous monster from Dragon Quest—and "morimori" is a Japanese adverb meaning "energetically" or "vigorously." If I had to localize this brand, I'd embrace alliteration and go with "Spirited Slime" or "Snappy Slime."

In 2003, Square Enix released an action/adventure game for the Game Boy Advance targeting younger kids starring a Dragon Quest slime. In contrast to the mainline games, these slimes are friendly and live in peace. The main character is a standard blue slime, but he lives in a village with 100 other slimes of various colors, shapes, and sizes. They fall prey to the "Tails Gang," a collection of other Dragon Quest monsters all sporting superfluous tails (yes, even the killing machines) and end up becoming their prisoners. As the sole remaining resident, the hero slime must battle the gang to rescue his fellow slimes while also rebuilding the entire town.

Slime Morimori Dragon Quest lacks any RPG elements, feeling more like a Zelda game with its semi-overhead perspective and real-time combat. Yet it's much simpler than that, as this slime cannot equip any weapons or carry more than a few objects at once on his head. His primary action is stretching his body and shooting himself forward, breaking objects and smacking enemies around, though he can also toss whatever he's carrying as an alternate attack.

Slime Morimori Dragon Quest was never released outside Japan, but it sold well enough to get a sequel on the Nintendo DS. This time, Square Enix dared to sell it overseas under the name Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime. While this second game closely mirrors the general premise of the first, an all-new "tank battle" mode debuts to take advantage of the console's dual screens. When the slime isn't fighting gangsters hand-to-hand (er, ooze-to-paw?), he's engaged in large-scale clashes inside a giant armored vehicle.

Adding an all-new gameplay mode brings a lot to the Slime Morimori Dragon Quest table, giving the experience a newfound sense of depth and grandiosity. The tanks are so large, they are almost small levels unto themselves, with multiple floors and cannons which are fixed at two distinct attack angles.

The player navigates the halls on one screen to collect ammunition and feed whatever they can into the cannons, while the other screen shows the two tanks on the battlefield, letting players keep track of incoming hazards.

Does it make "sense," strictly speaking, that the weakest of Dragon Quest's bestiary can suddenly command a warship that would have rolled over Erdrick without hesitation? Not in the slightest, but having players balance their attention between slime time and tank time does wonders for the flow and pacing of the game.

Which brings us to November 2, 2011, and the release of Slime Morimori Dragon Quest 3 for the Nintendo 3DS. The tanks from the last game have become boats, and players now explore an entire world (with geography much like our own planet) to fight wayward vessels on the high seas and battle bosses around the globe. It's not as radical a shift from the first game to the second, but the new hardware does allow for eye-popping three-dimensional graphics that the previous games could not deliver.

As a fan who discovered the series thanks to Rocket Slime, I was there on day one to pick up Slime Morimori Dragon Quest 3 and it did not disappoint. The shift from a "save our village" narrative to "save the world" quest raised the stakes quite a bit, and swapping tanks for boats made the artillery battles more challenging as I couldn't simply walk over and infiltrate my opponent's vessel. Thanks to the wifi and streetpass capabilities of the Nintendo 3DS, remote battles as well as asynchronous battles with passerby became available, meaning I always had a nautical conflict waiting for me should the need arise.

My system records indicate I put well over 100 hours into Slime Morimori Dragon Quest 3 which sounds like faint praise given the struggles the 3DS had in 2011, but it reflects how often and how long I spent with the game well after launch. Even with the main story complete, I spent at least as much time exploring the world post-game to enhance my frigate and topple stronger AI opponents, although I felt the unlockable ultra-tough boss rush proved to be insurmountable.

Alas, as much as I enjoyed Slime Morimori Dragon Quest 3, it launched at precisely the wrong time. It took months for the 3DS to build up a decent library of software, yet one day after Square delivered this sequel, Nintendo launched the console's first flagship title, Super Mario 3D Land. Even with critical praise (Famitsu gave it a 37 out of 40) and the Dragon Quest name attached, Slime Morimori 3 couldn't compete with a megaton release like Mario. Worse still, 3DS games cost much more than GBA or DS games, meaning Slime Morimori 3 carried a suggested retail price of 6000 yen (over $75 USD at the time). The game debuted in sixth place on the charts and sank like an anchor, never matching the success of the previous two games.

Even though the 3DS went on to become a popular console, both in Japan and overseas, Square Enix never localized Slime Morimori Dragon Quest 3 or released it in any other territories. While I believe it can be enjoyed with a minimal understanding of Japanese (the story and comedic moments will be lost, but the action requires little reading), the fact remains that the 3DS is a region-locked system, an anathema to the very nature of handheld gaming. So even if my words are driving you mad with anticipation for this game, the only way you can play it is to get a Japanese 3DS.

The dual-screen era of Nintendo handhelds saw a great many hit games that have yet to resurface on any modern platforms. Even the aforementioned Super Mario 3D Land can only be played on a 3DS. Perhaps every publisher is waiting for a vanguard to demonstrate that the market will support dual-screen ports on single-screen platforms, and until one company takes that risk we'll be stuck with scouring used shops for old cartridges. Yet it's hard to believe that any set of circumstances would lead Square Enix to re-release this trilogy spread across three separate consoles.

The Dragon Quest brand has meant money in the bank for 35 years in Japan and at present there are more fans around the world than ever before. Square Enix has made a point of keeping older entries available (either through straight ports or remastered editions) and has shown a willingness to experiment with spinoffs in various alternate genres. There are Dragon Quest monster-collecting games, Dragon Quest world-crafting games, and Japan has had an augmented-reality explore-the-real-world Dragon Quest mobile game for two years now.

However, the Slime Morimori series stands apart from other Dragon Quest spinoffs due to its lack of an elevator-pitch hook, a kiss of death in the world of corporate art. Another strike against it is the creative force behind the series, Yoshiki Watabe, left Square Enix shortly after Slime Morimori Dragon Quest 3's release. It's entirely possible that Square Enix will either resurrect the series or attempt another slime-based spinoff in the future, but the odds of Slime Morimori Dragon Quest 3 returning to the open ocean are mighty slim. That's a real shame, because it's not like the market is oversaturated with games about cutesy characters operating adorable war machines: Slime Morimori Dragon Quest scratched a very particular itch, one that now sits unfulfilled.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.