and European localizations of the game mark a departure from previous Dragon Quest titles due to the inclusion of voice acting in certain parts of the adventure pertaining to the advancement of the storyline. The game retains the series' tradition of allowing the player to name the lead character, reconciling the two by having the voice acting script skip incidences of the Hero's name, (e.g. the line "Okay, Hero, my boy..." appears on-screen, while the voice acting says, "Okay, my boy...") and occasionally replacing the name with Yangus' nickname for him, "guv" (as in "governor", pronounced with a Cockney accent). Unlike some earlier games in the series, which were censored during localization for North America, Dragon Quest VIII had no such censorship. The English translation is credited to Plus Alpha Translations and AltJapan Co., Ltd. Richard Honeywood, of Square Enix's localization office and famous for his work with Final Fantasy VIII and Chocobo Racing, was the main force behind the game's English localization. The iOS and Android version removed the voice acting, akin to the original Japanese PS2 version due to hardware limitations at the time.Dragon Quest VIII was released in PAL regions in April 2006 under the title Dragon Quest: The Journey of the Cursed King, dropping the Roman numeral. This marked the first time a main game in the series had been released in the PAL region. In an interview with Horii, he mentioned that the 2003 merger between Squaresoft and Enix (creating Square Enix) allowed the company to release more games in more localities, with producer Ryutaro Ichimura adding that "European tastes have changed because of the influence of anime and cartoons, so Europeans are more willing to receive this type of artwork." Music As with most Dragon Quest games, Koichi Sugiyama wrote the game's original score. An official soundtrack for Dragon Quest VIII was released in December 2005, published by Aniplex. In the Japanese release of the game, the game features sequenced music, whereas the North American and PAL versions contained the symphonic suite orchestral recordings performed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, with Sugiyama serving as the conductor. The 3DS versions swaps the soundtracks with the Japanese version using the symphonic suite orchestral recordings, while the North American and PAL versions use the sequenced music, which was entirely remastered, other than the original sequenced music in the Japanese PS2 version. The iOS and Android version