Famitsu, a Japanese video game magazine started in 1986 published in a recent article the internal release dates of the demo and retail version of Sakaguchi-San’s Blue Dragon RPG.
Blue Dragon launched in Japan back on December 12th, 2006 . Microsoft put high hopes on it lighting a fire under Xbox 360 console sales in Japan, they even went so far as to have special Blue Dragon Xbox 360 bundles available. Blue Dragon is the highest selling Xbox 360 title to date in Japan and it is also the first title that required multiple discs to play shipping on three discs.
Blue Dragon is done in a menga style with a heavy story line which if you’re not familiar with the game goes like this:
“When their village is attacked again Shu, Kluke, and Jiro fight back against the fin that appears to kill the people. However, they discover it is a strange machine. But even after damaging it, it goes back to the flagship, with the three still on it. There, they encounter constant attacks from metal soldiers until they discover three orbs of light. After hearing a voice tell them to swallow the orbs, they do and discover their shadows grow into monsters; Kluke's becomes a blue phoenix, Jiro's a blue minotaur, and Shu's a blue dragon. They then fight the ship's captain, Nene, and discover that Nene is behind the yearly attacks on their town. He easily defeats them, and they can barely make it to an escape capsule. They then land far from home and must then journey to find a way to save their land. Following their escape from Nene's air fortress, they encounter more people from towns that have also fallen victim to the purple clouds, and decide that they must try to stop Nene from continuing to bring ruin on their world.” --IMDb
Famitsu’s article says that we can expect the 1.1 Gb Blue Dragon demo to make an appearance on July 20th. The demo will include 2 hours of gameplay, a record for a demo as well as English voice overs with subtitle options. If you get hooked on the demo, you will be able to pick Blue Dragon up in stores on August 24th in Europe and August 28th in North America. Yes, it seems the tables are turned for the US who gets it last instead of first like most games.
