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Above: Some artwork from Dragon Quest Monsters Joker

Dragon Quest Monsters Joker

Making its way to the DS, the Monsters series made the leap into 3D polygonal graphics after years of spriteliness with Joker. A lot of core combat remained the same, but there were a few interesting changes to the gameplay, and it even included Wi-Fi functionality.

In Joker, the city of Green Bay is having a tournament for monster breeders where entrants compete to see who is top dog in the field. Players control a young lad sent by his father to look into the tourney, and discovers that one of the organizers is up to no good, and wants to turn humans into monsters. Of course this won't do at all, so it's up to players to not only win the tournament but deal with this guy as well. Those who aren't fond of random battles found a complete lack of them here, as players could see all enemies on the screen, and would only get into combat by coming into contact with them.

Above: Dragon Quest Monsters Joker had slightly different box art in the West (left) and Japan (right).

"Monsters were all given a lettered ranking to show how quick they would get stronger, as well as how difficult they were to find. All in all, there were 210 monsters in the game, with three particularly tough to get ones in Japan: Trode, Leopold, and Empyrea. Players could only get them by visiting DS Stations in Japan and challenging them in hopes of adding them to their armies. While each monster had their own unique abilities, there was also a skill system introduced in Joker that allowed players to assign additional skills to these creatures.

Joker saw a strong revitalization of the Monsters series in Japan, selling almost 1.5 million copies so far. In fact, a sequel has just been announced for it over there.