Yeah, and in the original Joker, they were one of the better monsters to use for Fusion.  As in, they were needed to combine with a lot of other monsters to make better monsters.

Well, now we have a new announcement for the game. It'll be coming out in Japan on April 28, 2010. They sure kept that game under wraps.

Hopefully it won't take a year for a western release.

http://release.square-enix.com/news/j/2010/02/oi821pkid.html

What is this & should I buy the DQM1 for DS?

I've been wondering whether to get DQMJ or not... I like the main series well enough but I'm not sure how I'd like the spin-offs...

Cool. Joker was alright but there was too much grinding. Dragon quest 2 was better. will get this first day if they have more exploration. if not then i'll wait a couple weeks.

Probably because Soriku posted this announcement but yeah, the DQ series isn't really popular here in the West (which is a shame ).

I never played the first DQMJ for the DS, but it seems to be a good game.

Is it similar to Pokémon in any way?

Its more like Pokemon is similar to Dragon Quest.  If you go back and play Dragon Quest Monsters, and even further back and play Drago nQuest V and VI, you'll see that Pokemon heavily barrowed their basic game engine, item collection, exploration and character interaction setup from Dragon Quest.  And of course, the idea of collecting monsters from Dragon Quest V and VI.

However, Dragon Quest Monsters, the Dragon Quest 'spin off' as some people say, does have a lot of differences to Pokemon.  Most notably because it tries to focus on being a lot like Dragon Quest instead of just being a Pokemon clone.  Eventhough it came out after Pokemon.

I was pretty disappointed by the original Joker, but I'll probably give this a go assuming it gets localized.

Its in the bag for Japan.  1-1.5m easy.  May even sell more since this game looks to have a lot more content going for it and is coming out a lot later in the DS lifetime and after 6 other DQ titles.  As for the west, they'll have to work for it.

Its really anyones guess when they'll decide to show off DQX.  I'm frankly surprised they even announced DQX was in development.  They only announced DQIX was in development 2 years into production.  And even then, only gave us a short teaser trailer which ended up looking nothing like the finish product (due to backlash that the game would change to a more real time, action based setup).  With DQX, you have a game that could be just starting development or have been in development since DQIX.  No one knows when development started, what development group is doing it (Chunsoft, Artepiazza, Level 5, a new group), when its expected to end (2012 is hinted at by Wada and some 'rumors') and etc.  And looking back at the past main Dragon Quest titles, most Dragon Quest games only take longer to finish, not shorter, which could mean this game could take anywhere from 3-5 years to finish (DQIX took 5 years to finish due to having to redo the entire game engine).  And if they just started development last year....we're looking at anywhere from 2011-2013 completion date....

So in my view, I'm guessing a 2011 TGS reveal is a VERY conservative estimate.  And probably only going to be a preview video of early concept design like we saw with DQIX.