Happy New Years! This year, Important Importables ended up landing on both Christmas and New Years! Surprise! I bet you expected Important Importables would take the holidays off. Nope! Let’s welcome in 2010 together!

2009 was a great year, with a lot of fantastic games released throughout the world. Hopefully, you even got some of them for Christmas or Hanukkah!

Today’s column is going for the nostalgia factor. We’re going to look back over the five biggest, most influential and exciting DS releases in Japan in 2009. Maybe you’ll see something that you’d love to import, or perhaps you’ll get a little glimpse at a game that’ll be appearing in North America or Europe in English this year…

While Square Enix hasn’t officially announced a worldwide release date for the DS game Dragon Quest IX, it’s probably coming soon. Square Enix just trademarked the game’s name in Europe. It is going to be officially known, at least in Europe, as Dragon Quest IX: Sentinel of the Starry Skies.

It’s a pretty good fit. In Japanese it was Dragon Quest IX: Hoshizora no Mamoribito, which losely translates into Dragon Quest IX: Defenders of Starry Sky. So Sentinel of the Starry Skies works. Square Enix didn’t just translate the title into English and trademark it though, it also translated and trademarked it in French, German, Italian and Spanish as well.

It isn’t unheard of that Square Enix did the trademarking in Europe first. In the last few years, it seems like the company has been shooting for near simultaneous releases of its games in North America and Europe…