Blue Dragon (video game)

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Blue Dragon

Developer(s)	Mistwalker, Artoon
Publisher(s)	Microsoft Game Studios
Designer(s)	Hironobu Sakaguchi (producer) Akira Toriyama (character designer) Nobuo Uematsu (composer)
Release date(s)	December 7, 2006 2007
Genre(s)	Role-playing
Mode(s)	Single player, Xbox Live
Rating(s)	CERO: A
Platform(s)	Xbox 360
Media	3 DVDs

Blue Dragon (ブルードラゴン, Burū Doragon^?) is an RPG for the Xbox 360 video game console. It was developed by Artoon based on a design by Final Fantasy series originator Hironobu Sakaguchi, who is also supervising development. Microsoft hopes this game's release will be a great boom to Xbox 360 sales in Japan they hope to sell over 200,000 copies breaking their record of most copies of an xbox 360 game sold in Japan to date, as it will be one of the first traditional Japanese RPGs to come to Microsoft's Xbox 360 system. The RPG genre is especially popular in Japan. The failure of Microsoft's first games console, the Xbox, in Japan is often partially attributed to the system's lack of traditional Japanese RPGs. Along with a quick video shown at E3 2006, Peter Moore promised the game would be out by the end of this year in Japan.^[1]

Blue Dragon's designers include two of the creators of Chrono Trigger, the extremely successful RPG for the Super Nintendo. The game features art from Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball and visual designer and illustrator of one of Japan's most popular video game series, Dragon Quest. Blue Dragon's soundtrack is produced by Nobuo Uematsu, a composer responsible for much of the music in the popular Final Fantasy game series. The music was performed live at the PLAY! A Video Game Symphony concerts in Chicago on May 27, 2006, Stockholm, Sweden on June 14, 2006, Philadelphia on July 27th, 2006, on August 4, 2006 in Vienna, Virginia, and, as an encore, on September 30, 2006 in Toronto, Ontario. One of the boss themes also includes vocals by English singer Ian Gillan.

On October 19, 2006 all 10,000 Blue Dragon preorders bundled with a limited edition Xbox 360 Core system were sold-out in Japan.^{[citation needed]}

This game is the first of a series of Blue Dragon games, manga and anime.

1 Plot and characters
2 Manga & anime
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Plot and characters

The main character, a boy named Shu, has a shadow that can transform into a blue dragon. Using this power, he embarks on a quest with his friends, who possess different shadow creatures, to save the world.

Other known characters are named Kire, Jiro, Zora, and Marumaro.

[edit] Manga & anime

On the 14th of November 2006 Shueisha announced that a manga adaptation of Blue Dragon will be produced. Blue Dragon ST (Secret Trick) will be drawn by Shibata Ami and will premier in Monthly Shonen Jump in January.^[2] Takeshi Obata, the illustrator of Death Note is handling Blue Dragon Ral Grado, which began serialization in Issue 1 2007 of Weekly Shonen Jump.^[3] An anime adaption of the game was also announced recently.

[edit] Reception

**Reviews and awards**
Publication	Response
Famitsu	37 of 40 ^[4]

With a total of 80,348 units sold on the first four days of release in Japan, Blue Dragon became the fastest selling Xbox 360 game in the region. ^[5]