Dragon Quest IX, the next installment in one of the world's most popular and long-running RPG series, has finally gotten a fairly solid release date--at least, it has in Japan. Square Enix has announced that the game will hit Japanese shores in March 2009. No exact date or pricing was given for the DS title, nor has Squenix given any indication of when North America and PAL regions can hope to get their hands on the next Dragon Quest. Although DQIX was given a North American date of November 20 a few months ago, it seems pretty clear at this point that that's not going to happen.

After having recently played through a Dragon Quest game for the first time, I'm pretty excited about getting to play a brand new entry in the franchise. Hopefully the rest of the world won't have to wait too long before we see this one in stores.

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