Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen

The DS Dragon Quest IV came after the PlayStation remake localization fell through. Worldwide, fans who could finally experience the fourth Dragon Quest title...minus half the script from the Japanese version.

Debug Room
UdgfaXB5Qtw There is a debug room, similar to the one found in the DS Dragon Quest V, hidden inside the ROM. It can be accessed through Action Replay code (Europe).

It consists of a house interior. There is a healing spot, only two damaging floors (as opposed to the many in the fifth game's debug room) a raft and a freaking ship taking you to an "island" of sorts, and stairs taking you to a dungeon-like room but with two non-working doors, yet you can go down the stairs (but not up). One of the ropes leads to an an upper floor, with a strangely-shaped conveyor belt. There are also two locked doors (the right one takes you outside) and another door at the far right taking you to a small room. And a bunch of non-functioning NPCs.

There are also some pitfalls and a second rope, which takes you to an exterior area with loads of NPCs. Unlike the fifth game, some still have coding, mainly testing camera and NPC scripting (although messages were deleted). There are two NPCs behaving like Church priests, and Item Shop owners. An out-of-place mist is in the center. A well can take you back to the previous room.

Movie Recorder
A debug routine left in the game which can be activated through Action Replay code (Japan). It is similar to the "Movie Recording" feature found in emulators: press Start to begin recording your button input, then Select to stop recording. If you press B + Start, it will reproduce your key inputs.

This is all quite odd, considering the game doesn't have an attract mode.

Early Localization
Amazingly enough, the Japanese version already had a partial localization in all five languages of the European version, which is uncommon with RPGs. To access them in the Japanese version, use Action Replay code where "?" is 1-5 (0 being Japanese text).

The prologue isn't translated, however, while the translation itself is reminiscent of the NES version and not in a good way – most noticeably, the Party Convos are also missing in this early translation state.

On a related note, the Japanese language option is still in the American and European version, just not available in the language select.

Regional Differences
The Party Talk feature (the party members commenting about ongoing events, much like the Skits in the Tales series) was removed from all non-Japanese versions, and as a result Dragon Quest IV was left with about 55% of the text it originally had. Due to massive fan outcry, this wasn't repeated with the subsequent DS games.