If you weren’t paying attention, Nintendoshut down the online servicesfor 3DS and Wii U, because the future is forward, baby. Unfortunately, this means that gamers with principles had to step in to preserve what Nintendo was burying with its digital store closures, and one of those things was theDragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten PastDLC maps.
Twitter user Sackchiefhad a planto preserve those 56 DLC maps for anyone who wants to experience them after the shutdown in the best way possible, too. There seemed to be no takers on the endeavour until Gronya, stuck in bed and recovering from bowel ulcers, decided to take on the difficult task of grinding for the cleanest save file.
Gronya lays out the entire agonizing process inthe embedded video. It involves keeping the two main protagonists dead while temporary party member Kiefer grinds his way to invulnerability to get to the point where the DLC Tablets could be obtained.
I’m going to be real with you: I don’t know enough aboutDragon Quest VIIand its DLC to know why this was necessary. I didn’t get into the series until about 2014 or 2015 when I was sad and lonely and my only escape was sprawling myself across the couch watchingGameCenter CXand playing Japanese games.
It seems as though this was done not because it was theonlyway to preserve the content but thebestway. Gronya even says that this could have been done in 10 hours without Super-Kiefer. Obviously, this was done for a reason, otherwise Gronya (and another user named DaniPhoFani) wouldn’t have gone to such lengths.
However, I admire the effort. It probably would have been better if Nintendo had just kept the infrastructure or designed it with more perpetuity in mind. Maybe Square Enix will one day portDragon Quest VIIagain with the DLC either intact or just recreated. We can’t count on that. So, for now, we have the hard-fought save file available on the Internet Archive.
