Saw a listing for this and was kind of surprised, considering how "well" Final Fantasy Remix (or, for that matter, Konami Addiction) turned out. Dragon Quest Dance Mix is being released March 4 by Avex instead of Square Enix. Seeing that Avex is also behind Initial D soundtracks, I'd get a kick out of eurobeat remixes. However, I get the feeling it'll be the same ol' boring house and techno remixes, similar to the stuff featured on the Space Invaders remix album Avex released earlier this year. Prove me wrong, Avex. Prove me wrong.

Found a listing with a description, unhelpful as it may be:
http://www.shinseido.co.jp/cgi-bin/WebO … AVCD-23788

First press copies come in a digipak. Still no word on what the album will sound like or what artists will be involved.

Some of the planned tracks:
01. Jokyoku
02. Bouken no Tabi (DQ III)
03. Elegy (DQ IV)
04. Dungeon (DQ III)
05. Sentou no Theme (DQ III)
06. Level Up
07. Oukyuu Rondo (DQ III)
08. Kaizu o Hirogete (DQ IV)
09. Soshite Densetsu e (DQ III)
10. Ozora o Tobu (DQ III)

Wow, good (or bad?) find. I absolutely cannot imagine Dragon Quest given a dance mix and really hope to be proved wrong too. I notice this isn't endorsed by Aniplex who normally publish Dragon Quest albums.

This just seems like a bad fit and having Avex behind it isn't encouraging.  Hopefully it'll at least be a little more ambitiously produced than Final Fantasy Remix.

if it's better than FF Remix I'll be cool with it. Nice find, sir!

I'm so buying this.  Not that I think it will be good, but I'm interested to see what they'll do with it.

I honestly thought this was a joke thread.

This is leet! I can see my friends and I party wild to such an album. Will be very nice for people who've played the DQ games and loves to party, I hope. I'm certainly one of them. Just need to persuade my friends into DQ. I honestly don't care how it sounds, as long as it is DQ and dance.

Same here, my brain went "huh?!?"

The only way to pull this off would be styling it so over the top and crazy insane and be risky enough to make it completely ridiculous, THEN it might work. 

(if they try too hard or serious it'll be EPIC FAIL, and I've gotten burned by far too many of those Remix albums already to take a blind chance again here)

I posted some new information on my trance blog. Yes, that's right, this'll be trance.

Samples at DragonFly's MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/dragonflytakayasu

Personally, I think this'll kick ass, at least if he has anything as awesome as "Yo! Kabuki" on the album. I don't particularly like his "Overture" remix, though, but apparently he did it when he was 19. He's 24 now, so hopefully he has better synths to work with.

I still don't know how this got past Sugiyama, but at least it's not electro again.

Judging from his sampled work, this could end up being really, really good.  I'm digging the Overture remix already; it's already leagues ahead of Final Fantasy Remix.

IS that supposed to be the Dragon Quest Mix album, or is that a different fan-produced album? Good samples, though.

...

Final Fantasy Remix, I don't give it an often listen, but it's good for something chill and down tempo; definitely not raving material, though. I am NOT selling my copy...

Cheesy as hell in my opinion. The trance isn't bad -- pretty generic but fairly well implemented. However, the classically-oriented melody feels completely out of place. It's as I thought -- Sugiyama's Dragon Quest music just isn't intended for this sort of purpose, just like rock or pop remixes would be intrinsically flawed too. I'd much rather listen to a trance album where the melody was clearly written for an electronic purpose and the rest of the features aren't so derivative.

More info and samples in Avexnet website:
http://www.avexnet.or.jp/dq/index.html

Samples for all of the tracks are now available: http://www.hmv.co.jp/digital/product/de … 2001661526

I'm still not in love with the synths he uses on some of the tracks. "Kaizu o Hirogete," however, is much more to my liking. I'm also digging the rock-tinged "Dungeon" as well as the more serene "Elegy." I do wish he'd take it a little easy on the random vocal samples, though. Some of them are incredibly distracting.

And in yet another reason to hate Avex, they put up an extended version of "Overture" exclusively online, even though it easily would've fit onto the CD.

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSt … 7&s=143462

another "hit or miss" for me. In general I think I'm going to like this more than FF Remix. But when I read "trance" here, I worked the words "ambient" and "soft" into my mind, and these are not that.

We need more remixes like the one Mitsuto Suzuki did on the Romancing SaGa 2 end battle from "Square Enix Battle Tracks Vol.1" ... that style of remixing for DQ could've worked IMO.

Ramza

So, as anyone heard this album yet? I'm put off by the whole concept so I won't be listening unless I can be convinced otherwise, but I'm not the biggest DQ music fan in the first place.

They had this set up at the local CD shop so I gave it a listen.  All the tracks faded out after a minute or so but I got to hear every track at least.

People should realize when they say trance that this is Tokyo-style trance, which is completely different from Paul Van Dyke and the like. The style is less about progression and buildup over the course of the track than it is about high-energy melodies and one-two stomper beats. It's kind of similar in tone to the old Dancemania and DDR music (around 3rd Mix era) but with harder beats (no breakbeats in the clips I heard) and synthier melodies.

Contrary to my expectations, Dragon Quest's themes actually DO go pretty well with trance, or at least the ones they chose for the album.  "Into the Legend" is good fun at the end and even "Dungeon" sounded good as a trance remake.  The one area I think they may have gone too far is the vocal sampling - it seems pretty frequent and is standard clubbing "Get up outcha seat" sort of stuff.  (One track actually uses part of the exact same rap line from Nights Remix's "Paternal Horn", oddly enough.)

I can't comment on how well the tracks develop over their course, and that'll probably be the make-or-break factor.

So whats the verdict on this?

Good album, or no?

I did like the Ys dance-ish (Prowhateverism) album...

as long as this topic has been bumped, I'd like to ask an unrelated question - am I imagining things, or are there no fan remix albums with Dragon Quest arrangements on them? I couldn't find any on VGMdb, and despite how popular the series is, I've never run across anything except a few arrangements by English-speaking (ie, Western) remixers.

I thought it was pretty damn terrible.

And Dais is right that there really isn't much for JP doujin arranges of DQ music that I've seen either.. maybe one or two tracks somewhere but not specifics that I can remember.

Oh, maybe Sugi being a Director of JASRAC has something to do with it...

(that they'd swat down doujin efforts relating to DQ rather than "turning a blind eye" like most game companies)

It wasn't as bad as I thought, but I had very very low expectations. I guess I found the trance often very generic and some of the vocal samples bizarre. However, my main problem was just the concept -- I don't think 'Dragon Quest meets trance' (or most other classical music for that matter) could ever work without making cringe. I don't hate it as much as Carl or Don, but still have to question why the album was ever commissioned.

Here's a full track sample for your listening terror

04_Dungeon.mp3
sendspace.com/file/gerbjw

Sure makes me want to "break it" alright... by throwing it out a window!

I was disappointed.  Verdict is negatory.