Price Drop - DSi's Down to Normal Price - $169.99 - 4/24/09

Bam, it's finally time to start selling DSi's at normal price! The DSi has received tremendous success as of late. Honestly, DSi ware is a genius idea. We'll see where it goes the next year or so.

One thing about DSi's is this, pre-book wholesale price was upwards of $190, and it slowly declined by $5 every week or so. Even though we're selling them at retail price, gamestop and other retailers probably only make $5 per unit. If you really take a look at the pot odds, it's not much, investing $165 to make $5.

But it's okay, we have hope in bad-pot-odd-hardware-items and hope that like any other electronics store, you'll come in and purchase something else while you're at it.

Pre-Order Update - Dragon Quest Smile Slime Monster Plush Dolls

Dragon Quest Smile Slime Monster Plush Doll: Momon - $29.99
Dragon Quest Smile Slime Monster Plush Doll: Mimic - $29.99
Dragon Quest Smile Slime Monster Plush Doll: Purisunyan - $29.99
Dragon Quest Smile Slime Monster Plush Doll: Doraki - $29.99
Dragon Quest Smile Slime Monster Plush Doll: Odoru Houseki - $29.99
Release Date - Mid July
PreOrders - Open

-a little bit of fun history about dragon quest-

In 1982, Enix sponsored a national video game programming contest, which brought much of the Dragon Quest team together, including Yūji Horii. The prize of the competition was a trip to the United States, and a visit to AppleFest '83 in San Francisco, where Horii discovered Wizardry. Koichi Nakamura and Yukinobu Chida, two other winners of the contest, along with Horii, released The Portopia Serial Murder Case for the Famicom for Enix. Sugiyama, already famous for jingles and pop songs, impressed with the group's work, sent a postcard to Enix, commenting on the software. In response, Enix asked him to write music for some of its games. The group then decided to make a console role-playing game, using a combination of Wizardry and Ultima. Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama, who knew Horii through the manga magazine Shonen Jump, was commissioned to illustrate the characters and monsters to separate the game from other RPGs of the time and the Dragon Quest "team" was born.

Dragon Quest was created by Yūji Horii, who has been the scenario director since. The series monster and character designs, as well as box art, are done by famed Dragon Ball manga artist, Akira Toriyama. All of the music for the Dragon Quest series has been composed by Koichi Sugiyama. Dragon Quest games have been developed by Chunsoft, Heartbeat, Artepiazza, and starting with Dragon Quest VIII, Level-5. Horii's own company, Armor Project, is in charge of the Dragon Quest games, which were published by Enix and now Square Enix. While Toriyama is the series' character designer, the primary designs are first conceived by Horii, before being handed to Toriyama to re-draw under Horii's supervision. When Horii first created Dragon Quest, most people doubted that a fantasy series with swords and dungeons instead of science fiction would become popular in Japan; but the series has become a phenomenon there.

Dragon Quest is not nearly as successful outside Japan, having been eclipsed by Final Fantasy and other RPG series. Because of Enix America Corporation's closure in the mid 1990's, Dragon Quest V and Dragon Quest VI were never officially released in North America. In Europe, none of the games have seen release prior to the spin-off Dragon Warrior Monsters then Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King. With the merger of Square with Enix in 2003, the number of places that Dragon Quest games are released has greatly increased. In May 2008, Square Enix announced localizations of the Nintendo DS remakes of Dragon Quest IV, V, and VI, known collectively as the Zenithia trilogy, for North America and the PAL region. With this announcement, all the main games in the Dragon Quest series will now have seen release outside Japan at least once.

The ninth installment is due to be released in Japan for Nintendo DS in July 2009. North American and European and other PAL region releases are suspected to follow. The tenth installment of the main series is currently in development for the Wii.