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I figured this was worthy of its own thread. If you head on over to www.dragonquest8.com there's a new registration page. If you fill out the form, you'll be sent a copy of the DQ8 demo. If you refer a friend and sign them up, you'll be sent a Slime keychain (while supplies last, anyway).

The site claims the shipping is 4 to 6 weeks, but I'm sure it may come faster than that. I've been reading that the demo is around 3 to 4 hours long with sidequests, even for decent players. Nice to have a large demo for once.

The game itself is set for November 22nd, so whatever happens, you should recieve the demo before then I hope lol.

This is more DDS1 related, but I've got to ask... I noticed while looking at the Mantra list that there's one called "Wikipedia". Is that in reference to the site, or is there something behind that name that I don't know?

I too wondered about this. After looking around, there seemingly was no basis for it in mythology or otherwise. Wikipedia gets its name from the combination of "wiki" and "encylopedia"... where Wiki is just a web application. The name "wiki" according to Wikipedia comes from "Cunningham coined the term wiki after the "wiki wiki" or "quick" shuttle buses at Honolulu Airport."

So, from all I can figure out, it's either just randomly named or actually based upon the Wikipedia website. It's entirely possible considering how popular it is the world over.

I never got around to writing down the credits from Persona 2... do you know if they may be there? I have a save near the end of the game and I'll try that out when I have time to play it again. Who knows when that'll be though lol.

Otherwise, Atlus seems to have this thing for not listing voice actors in the credits that I do not understand.

There was a bit of down time on Digital Devil Database as a whole today. I've been extremely busy with finals and just incredibly stressed out (as such, if you've IMed me within the last week or so I'm sorry if I've not responded); renewing the domain completely skipped my mind.

It expired today and, luckily, renewing it was not a problem. Once I have some more money (I could barely cover the small fee right now) I plan on buying the domain for a few years. It won't be a reoccuring problem, that's for sure. As of now it's set until September 2006.

So that should explain that weird page anyone may have seen.

Heh, I know all about not finishing games. Time is always an issue.

Thanks for joining everybody. SpicyOctopus is a great name lol.

Nice link. I've checked that site out before since it's on your page... I wish I knew French sometimes lol.

Were those people cosplaying or were they actually involved with Atlus?

The movies are a bit blurry (understandably), but they give the best view of the game in action that I've seen thus far. The battle system looks incredibly entertaining.

I don't get it at all, why did they not release 'innocent sin' for in the U.S but went ahead and released 'revelations' ?

I think you also have to remember that the original Persona (I assume you mean that game by "Revelations" and not the Game Boy Color title) came out like four years before the Persona 2 titles hit the US. It was essentially one of the earliest Playstation RPGs to be released here.

As for that Korean version... cool, but I'd never use any of that stuff lol.

If for some reason that doesn't work, give me a PM... sometimes vB just gives weird random errors about things, but I can work around them with the privledges.

Yeah, admittedly, this does kind of reek of "been there, done that", but I will give it the benefit of the doubt considering who is involved. It could turn out.

The website presents the game in a more realistic and dark fashion that the initial descriptions led me to believe. Those screen shots are tiny too, lol, but at least Flash lets you zoom in.

Yeah, I can see that. I can't claim to have direct experience with racism against me... at least not to any big enough level to cause me real alarm. Still, that whole situation with Gretna is really sad and apparently more about it starting to break out as time goes on. I think that's one of the worst things I've read about direct reactions to it all.

I thought this might be of interest to some people: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12637172.htm

It basically explains that the guy in charge of Homeland Security actively delayed federal response to the problem. He had the ability to send things in before the storm and seemingly just took his time. I don't really understand why. He didn't appoint Brown to be in charge of these things until two days after the disaster and even the Brown had limited abilities by comparison.

I think the whole race thing has been overblown. A majority of the people in that area apparently were black, but I don't know that Bush would have acted any differently in any other situation. A lot of it, right now, stems from the fact that a good portion supporters of the man and his policies are going on and on about how the area deserved this hurricane thanks to all of its "sin" and so forth. I am sure a lot of it is racist.
 
For example, evacuees were told to cross this bridge into neighboring Gretna to escape the chaos. The Police Chief there told his deputees to keep black people out and anyone accompanied by them. They shot at them, kept them back, etc, all so these people couldn't taint their suburbs. There's several articles about it floating around, although for some reason it hasn't been talked about anywhere as much as it should be.
 
As for the Governor, there was actually word from the Administration that she never declared the state a disaster area, which was later proven to be a lie. I notice that they're very heavily trying to pin this inaction on other things rather than squarely where it belongs. Bush taking "responsibility" is meaningless right now when he just mouths the words, but then does nothing to rectify the situation. Sending money over wasn't thanks to anything he did; it was Congress. Meanwhile, the administration, again, is using no-bid contracts through FEMA while dealing with all of this... much like with Iraq and Halliburton, but not quite as major. More of his friends get the money and weird policies have been instituted to lower pay and other options for the actual workers.
 
It's all just really weird and really disgusting. Should the Governor have acted more? Sure. But there's a reason this guy is the damn President. Simple logic puts the President over the Governor. Everyone knew what was going to happen, the money for levees went to the war and any Class 3+ hurricane would have busted them, there were several days before it hit that everyone knew it was going to that area, etc. Instead the President fishes and bikes.
 
Going to Arizona and spending twenty minutes linking Iraq's purpose to that of World War II on the freaking day this is happening is just bizarre and disgusting. There's no link. There was an understanding back then that there should be a common sacrifice among the whole population for that war; more taxes, more work, more whatever. Today the only sacrifice is blood on the altar for a muddy cause: send the middle and lower classes to die for a muddy, vague cause that the administration keeps changing the purpose of (Bin Laden, Al Quida, Saddam, Terrorism... now it's some sort of protecting oil reserves thing). Taxes haven't been raised meaning people in my age bracket will be paying for it., little has been accomplished, the last draft of the constitution puts Islam at the front effectively making women a lower class, even the guy in charge of Iraq wants our troops to start leaving depite the fact that we're "helping" them, etc.
 
As for O'Rielly, I cannot watch that tripe. Him and Limbaugh need to go away. Limbaugh, for example, is convinced that Cindy Sheenan's story of her dead son has been made up by some sort of crazy anti-war movement and never happened. When will they look at a poll and see that something like 60%+ disapprove of what is going on?
 
Further polls show that around the same amount disapprove of the President's reaction to the hurricane and 70% want a probe. I'm glad most of this country isn't completely oblivious to reality.

There's a lot of messed up things there thanks to government issues. For one, the levees haven't been properly fixed and mantained because funding for that purpose has been dramatically cut. That money went to the current war. It seems unlikely that they would have broken had they been kept up how they had been for years upon years before hand.

In addition to this, general hurricane funding for the area had been cut dramatically in a very short period of time. This occured despite the fact that meteorologists had been warning as early as 2001 could devestate that area (in fact, the US administration got a freaking memo on it that year). Plus, a lot of the necessary equipment and workforce is in Iraq.

Then, of course, we have a President who feels a need to take month long vacations knowing full well that we're in a war of his design with an upcoming, undoubtedly catastrophic event. Thank god he cut the vacation two days short!! Although part of that was spent giving speeches that spent 20 minutes comparing Iraq to WWII and about two on the hurricane. I don't know how many people heard how Homeland Security wouldn't let Canadian trucks down with aid. Lot of good that did.

Now he "cares". Now we're sending aid. Any other person with a few brain cells would have adequately prepared for this hurricane by sending the right things and money over. It didn't come out of freaking nowhere. The fact that so many people are making it seem like it did drives me crazy. We  acted far too late and it's been far worse than it had to be.

I'm excited, too. But a PS3...they're really going to eat my wallet. XD;

Yeah. Hopefully it won't come out for awhile because I'm not interested in spending as much money as the PS3 is likely going to cost anywhere near launch.

The other thing about this Gamespy preview that leaves me wondering is the claim "you can play through this game without ever playing the first and still be fine."  I heard something similar to Persona 2: Eternal Punishment when I picked it up.  Maybe I was able to finish it and enjoy it, but by the end I was still wishing for a translated copy of Innocent Sin.

After finishing DDS, I don't know. Honestly, you get to know the characters and see a few situations and the backstory, but very little happens in it overall to what I'm told is coming up in DDS2. Despite spending many hours on that game, I could probably summarize most of it very quickly. It seems almost like a prologue to a major story than a prequel... Innocent Sin, by comparison, was a full on game that existed as its own entity before any sequel was even considered. But again, I'm only just reading these things. I've not played it lol.

Musubi is one of those things that sounds okay on the surface simply because I am a loner in many cases. I have plenty of friends and opportunities to go do stuff, but I do value my alone time to a rather high amount... but Musubi just takes that to such an extreme that I would feel like it would drive one insane.

Yosuga sounds a lot like things are already here. The Darwin stuff, as mentioned. Survival of the fittest. Unfortunately, it seems to imply far more brutality and I'd rather avoid that lol.

So, etc, etc, etc. I'd pick Freedom in a real situation. All the other choices are really a lack of something I think should be rather fundamental to one's existance.