Torneko Taloon is my new hero

So I’ve been playing the new remake of Dragon Quest IV for the DS lately, and been having a blast. It does some really neat things, like breaking up the game into five chapters, each with it’s own mini-plot to develop the charcters you’ll meet later on in the main quest. It’s kinda like episodic gaming before there was the idea of epiosodic gaming. And Chapter 3 introduces of of the most awesome charcters in gaming (at leats for me) since Mario: Torneko Taloon.

You see, he has but one dream in the world, and that is to be the most awesome richest arms merchant EVER.  And you know that may seem like a bad idea in today’s world, in the DQ4 world they areabout to be taken over by a Dark Lord of Evil and monsters raom the land terroizing eveyrone. So the idea that people could use a good weapon is a pretty good one. Too bad you gotta work for SwordStop. 

Our hero in this mini-arc doesn’t start off as a arms merchant, oh no. Instead he has to work his way up from being a sales associate. What this translates into as far as the game goes is for the first few chunks of time you play the game as one of those weapons sellers you always meet to upgrade your stuff through the game, only this time you are on the other side of the counter. You have to wait by the counter for people to come in, browse your wares, then they’ll make a selction. Sometimes they’ll want to pawn off some random other weapon they’ve probably stolen from Wal-Mart or something and this is where I got to gleefully tell them “No, I don’t want your ratty-stupid old weapon.” Every time. Every. Wonderful. Time.

… Retail has not made me bitter, at all. Once you have spent a few in-game nights and days working you’ll make enough money to start buying some weapons and armor yourself and pretty soon you’ll start to hear rumors of treasure and stuff. That’s when you get to set off on your own, and say “Screw you retail I get to go fight dragons and stuff for MY riches!” Only Torneko would do it in some awesome Irish dialect.

Yeah, the man is totally my hero.