New video shows off Dragon Quest 8’s touchscreen controls

We’re still trying to keep our excitement contained at a manageable level ever since the word got out last month that Square Enix would be bringing the first 8 Dragon Quest games to mobile iOS and Android devices in Japan, not to mention a mobile release of Dragon Quest 10 via Ubitus’ GameCloud service.

But now that we’ve seen a clip of the ported Dragon Quest 8 in action and running on a smartphone, complete with our first glimpse of the game’s touchscreen controls, the anticipation for a global release has now all but gone through the roof.

In the brief 2-minute demo video uploaded by Famitsu and reported on by Polygon, we see a player holding a single finger down on the screen to manipulate a virtual on-screen joystick of sorts, which allows their character to move around in the game world with ease. The turn-based battle system seems even more fluid, with simple taps on the subsequent menus that pop up being all it takes to bring your many foes to their demise.

So there you have it: a full-fledged Dragon Quest game running on a mobile device with touchscreen controls. Not too shabby, don’t you think? And hopefully the next time we report on the game, it’ll be to tell you about a Western release!