Dragon Quest IV Coming to the DS
Kotaku is reporting that, while no official announcement has been forthcoming, a new Square Enix Dragon Quest IV teaser site has been launched. It seems that the game is slated for a September 16th release in the US for the DS. In addition to the announcement, the site also seems to be promising Dragon Quest V and VI at undisclosed times in the future.
The major improvement are the backlighting of the LCD, the lite ones are much brighter, they also changed the coating so it is more scratchproof.
Also the batterylife was improved (and the size as you have already mentioned.)
Finally due to the size reduction GBA games stick out from the DS lites.
That's all I can remember (the feeling of the buttons are different aswell.)
The Japanese Rom of the DS title had the complete English translation contained within it, minus a couple bits of the intro, and of some bonus content. The entire game was playable with a simple patch (google it) to the rom and a copy to a DS flash cart.
The conversion on the DS is a quite nice job, actually. It's definitely my favorite of the Dragon Quest series - classic simple Dragon Quest gameplay, with excellent characters, and a driving sense of progress that is a bit missing from the later games.
Ryan Fenton