Nintendo Holds Pre-Teen Slumber Party for Dragon Quest IX

[Tom Goldman]

Nintendo Holds Pre-Teen Slumber Party for Dragon Quest IX

To show the widespread appeal of Square Enix's Dragon Quest IX, Nintendo held a slumber party for 12-year-old girls.

Dragon Quest is one of the most popular franchises in Japan and able to sell Dragon Quest IX [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/93107-Dragon-Quest-IX-Sells-2-3-Million-in-Two-Days] to hopefully bring the series into more overseas households, and one of those promotions recently included a slumber party for 12-year-old girls.

Read that last sentence as many times as you want, but it'll keep saying the same thing. Nintendo held a Halloween slumber party for at least 6 or more pre-teen girls and set them loose with DSi systems and Dragon Quest IX. From photos of the event we see the girls were given Dragon Quest slime shirts to wear, and the room/home they were in was littered with Dragon Quest decorations and plushies. They apparently played Dragon Quest IX's tag mode and helped each other kill monsters while collecting loot.

This promotion seems odd, but you really can't blame Nintendo for trying. There's no reason why 11 and 12-year-olds shouldn't be into Dragon Quest IX, but you wouldn't typically think of them as the series' target audience. Why not give events like these a shot and attempt to distribute the photos to more casual websites that could promote Dragon Quest IX as a female and pre-teen friendly game?

Anything that makes a segment of the population take a second look at a videogame worth playing that they would otherwise ignore is cool with me. I just want a chance to get my hands on one of those shirts and plushies too, though I can totally understand Nintendo not wanting to host a slumber party full of grown hardcore RPG fans.

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[Eri]

That's...interesting..

 

[Wow they sure are generous with the usernames]

Uhhh huhhh......

 

[Benmonkey7]

Dragon Quest IX has plushies but Fallout: New Vegas doesn't? I want a deathclaw plushie dang it!

OT: Odd promoting Nintendo...odd indeed. Maybe it will actually work.

 

[[Gavo]]

Okay, then.

Weird. Really weird.

 

[MmmFiber]

]Okay, then.

Weird. Really weird.

If by 'weird' you mean 'creepy as fuck' then yeah.

Edit: Am I the only one who thinks this is just Nintendo's preliminary attempt to bring Lolicon out of anime/manga and into the real world?

 

[mistwolf]

DQ is pretty tame. My 9 year old son and then-6-year-old daughter both played VIII or whichever the one was before this one. I mean, I'd be a little wary of any corprate-sponsored slumber parties in general, but the age group playing that game doesn't bother me.

 

[technoted]

This is what saddened me about the game, it didn't feel like a Dragon Quest game, maybe it's not targeted at the fans anymore...

 

[Lightslei]

DQ is pretty tame. My 9 year old son and then-6-year-old daughter both played VIII or whichever the one was before this one. I mean, I'd be a little wary of any corprate-sponsored slumber parties in general, but the age group playing that game doesn't bother me.

I mean the only seen that comes relatively close to "un-tame" would be Argonia where the King is basically telling his son about girls and they use Jessica as an example. Meh, I may still end up getting IX eventually.

 

[coldfrog]

A red and white slime approaches!

It says "Hey little boy/girl! Want to play a game?"

It's pretty weird.

Oh, also:

Anything that makes a segment of the population take a second look at a videogame worth playing that they would otherwise ignore is cool with me. I just want a chance to get my hands on one of those shirts and plushies too, though I can totally understand Nintendo not wanting to host a slumber party full of grown hardcore RPG fans.

That King Slime beanbag-chair looking thing in the background... gotta have it! though I bet it might not be too hard to make one on my own, though of a smaller size.

 

[emeraldrafael]

Why does this have bad idea written all over it in big red letters?

 

[Desworks]

Huh....Well, I suppose they...

Huh.

I got nothing.

 

[Tim Latshaw]

Well, at least they didn't invite a bunch of 20-something guys to sleep over and play Babysitting Mama all night...

 

[thenumberthirteen]

All the Drago Quest TV spots I've seen have been "Hey look at me I can dress up my character!" and about 2 seconds on the rest of the game. I hate Nintendo marketing. It all has to be family friendly casual stuff now. They don't do cool stuff like Sony's Kevin Butler. I suppose they have to Market to their consumer base, and they have just built their fourth yacht out of bundles of $100 bills so you can't complain.

 

[Simalacrum]

okaaaay then, I'm just gonna, you know, walk away slooowly now...

Nintendo has suddenly become that creepy middle-aged man who is always just that little too nice to the neighbourhood children in my minds eye...

 

[Spacelord]

A Japanese video game company organising a slumber party for twelve year old girls.

Am I the only person who feels this should raise some serious red flags?

 

[Superior Mind]

...

Who the shit thought this was a good idea? It doesn't even sound good on paper!