40 Reasons Dragon Quest is Still King 40 Years Later
40 Reasons Dragon Quest is Still King 40 Years Later
All hail the Dragon(Quest)lord.
Did you know that Square Enix’s Dragon Quest turns 40 today? That makes it the second-longest continuously running video game role-playing series of all time! (Technically, Trails in the Sky and its cohorts are part of the Dragon Slayer series, which began in 1984.) Now, we haven’t published any Dragon Quest games here at Limited Run, but sometimes you just have to give props to a competitor. With 40 years (and far more than 40 entries and spinoffs) under its belt, Dragon Quest has certainly earned its props. Here are 40 things worth celebrating about it.
©Square Enix/Nintendo
1. It normalized great localization
When Dragon Quest hit NES as Dragon Warrior in 1989, you were lucky to see complete sentences and functional grammar in games translated into English from Japanese. Nintendo didn’t just translate Dragon Warrior, they gave it a fun personality with a corny (but charming) Shakespearean dialect.
2. ...and localization is more than just words
The U.S. version also underwent a huge technical overhaul, with a streamlined menu system, more elaborate sprite work, and a built-in battery save system. In the original Famicom version, you had to record data with lengthy, error-prone passwords!
3. A powerhouse creative collaboration
A big part of Dragon Quest’s success had to do with the fact that its creators were up-and-coming Enix design stars. Yuji Horii had designed a hit computer murder mystery adventure called Portopia Rezoku Satsujin Jiken (The Portopia Serial Murder Case). Koichi Nakamura had programmed a puzzle action sensation called Door Door. Both loved RPGs. So when Enix wanted an RPG, they were the guys to do it.
4. A collaboration to satsujin for
Horii and Nakamura had already collaborated before Dragon Quest, converting Portopia to the Famicom console (Japan’s NES). In the process, they figured out how to make a text-based computer game work with a two-button controller. (It involves lots of menus.) That provided the groundwork for their design for Dragon Quest.
5. A collaboration beyond gaming, even
The real impetus for creating Dragon Quest came from Kazuhiko Torishima, an editor at Shonen Jump comics magazine. Torishima saw the growing popularity of video games and helped spearhead games coverage in Jump. “What if we made a game and documented the process?” he thought. And so he reached out to publisher Enix, who advertised heavily in Jump, and a project was born.
6. Seriously, an all-star cast
In order to help sell the game and tie it to Jump, the Dragon Quest creative team roped in rising manga superstar Akira Toriyama. Toriyama had launched a series called Dragon Ball in 1984, where he demonstrated a knack for combining epic fantasy with slapstick whimsy. Toriyama’s key illustrations and monster designs helped set the game apart from other RPGs by giving it a fun personality.
©Square Enix/Nintendo
7. It’s all goo
The first little guy you encounter once you leave the castle gates in Dragon Quest is a Slime. Lots of video games have Slimes, but they’re usually formless blobs or gelatinous cubes. These Slimes are silly little onions with a smiling face. They are so happy for you to smash them into a puddle and claim your 1 experience point and 2 gold.
8. Role-playing for fun and profit
Dragon Quest would still have plenty of personality even without the hokey translation and grinning monsters. Horii has a knack for sly jokes and cheeky dialogue. For example, once you rescue the missing princess midway through the adventure, you need to take her back home to the castle. But if you stop along the way to rest overnight, you’ll get a knowing wink from the innkeeper the following morning. Saucy stuff for an NES game!
9. So many all-stars
By the way, the U.S. localization programming that enhanced the NES game over the original Famicom release? That was handled by one of Nintendo’s favorite outside contributors. You may have heard of him? His name was... Satoru Iwata.
10. That’s right, Nintendo
Yes, Enix may have funded and published Dragon Quest in Japan, but in the U.S, Nintendo picked it up as their big release (along with Tetris) for 1989. The game did so well in Japan that Nintendo decided to bring it over themselves and upgrade it for American release.
11. Sleeper hit
Admittedly, Dragon Quest didn’t immediately crush the sales charts in Japan. It did fine, but it didn’t really become a best-seller until the sequels arrived. By the time Dragon Quest III debuted in 1988, of course, the series had become so popular that launch-day lines became a matter of international news.
Source: Nintendo Power Issue 1, July/August 1988 ©Nintendo
12. Slow-burn international hype
Many Americans first heard of Dragon Quest because of those lines: the very first issue of Nintendo Power magazine reported on Dragon Quest III’s retail success and began teasing the arrival of the original game in the series more than a year before it reached the U.S.
13. Role-playing mania!
By any measure, the Dragon Quest series did incredibly well for itself. So well, in fact, that just about every publisher worth its salt had their own RPG out for Famicom within a year or two in response. Some looked almost exactly like Dragon Quest, while others attempted to stand out by being different. The best of them—games like Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy—used Dragon Quest as a jumping-off point to do their own thing.
14. The right game at the right time (in Japan)
You can make a strong case that if Dragon Quest hadn’t kicked off console RPG mania in Japan, some other game would have. There was a lot of enthusiasm for RPGs among Japan’s player base in the mid ’80s, but all of those games were tied to expensive home computers. Prior to Dragon Quest, playing an RPG meant you either needed a beefy PC like the NEC PC-9801 or else had to settle for action-RPGs like The Tower of Druaga or The Legend of Zelda. Dragon Quest didn’t quite have the depth of a proper computer RPG, but it came close enough for most people.
15. A great starting point
The fact that Dragon Quest lacked the depth of a proper computer RPG was, honestly, a strength. The Famicom attracted a younger audience than computers, and tossing them into the deep end of a Wizardry or Ultima would have been overwhelming for them. But a game where you control a single little guy who fights single monsters one by one on a simple quest to find a few tokens and destroy the villain? A great entry point for RPG newbs.
16. Above all, it’s kind
One of Dragon Quest’s greatest innovations is the notion that death can be gentle. When you lose a battle here, you get kicked back to the castle where the adventure began... but instead of resetting all of your gains since the last time you recorded progress the way most RPGs handle defeat, you keep all of your items and experience to date and simply lose half of your current stash of cash. That’s a bummer when you’re a few dozen gold shy of a big purchase, but it certainly beats losing everything! By allowing you to hang on to your experience, Dragon Quest guarantees that eventually even the most inept warrior can gain enough levels to steamroll the bad guys. No matter how many times they die.
Source: GameFAQs.com
17. It’s secretly a little random
Unlike many RPGs, Dragon Quest doesn’t allow you to customize your hero. You learn specific spells at set levels, and you have a more or less linear set of weapon and armor upgrade options. But there is a hidden touch of character customization available: the name you give your hero at the outset affects their stat growth! For best results, we recommend the name Yics.
18. True open-world design
Although Dragon Quest’s central story involves a fixed sequence of events, how you go about achieving those ends is up to you. You can go practically anywhere in the world you like from the moment you leave Tantagel Castle. Granted, you won’t get very far as a naked level 1 nobody running around with a wooden stick for a sword and pot lid shield, but you can in theory walk all the way to the cape leading to the Dragonlord’s castle right from the beginning. It’s a simple game, but it lets you do your thing.
19. An open world with gentle guard rails
If you pause to take stock of things, you’ll find that Dragon Quest divides its world with rivers and bridges. The critters inhabiting the fields outside the castle are just about a match for a low-level hero, but cross a bridge to another land mass and suddenly you’ll find the creatures roaming that space to be considerably more difficult. This makes the concept of beefing up for what’s ahead all the more palatable for the novice player, and it gives you clear guidance for when things are about to get nastier. Caves are similar! The further you descend, the deadlier the creatures in the depths.
20. Just watch out for surprises
Well, mostly clear guidance. Sometimes you may step into a seemingly innocuous place only to find yourself confronted by monsters that are far deadlier than anything in the surrounding region. You’ll never forget the first time you get jumped by a frickin’ Green Dragon in what should be the safe space of the town of Hauksness....
©Square Enix/Nintendo
21. The right game at the wrong time (in America)
Dragon Quest is a great game for console RPG novices, but the funny thing is that a lot of serious console fans already had a handle on the ropes when it came to RPGs by the time Dragon Quest hit the States. Since it took more than three years for the game to reach America, it was beaten to the localization punch by tons of games that had emerged in the wake of its success of Japan—not only pure RPGs like Phantasy Star and Ultima: Exodus, but tons of hybrids, too, like Zelda II, Castlevania II, and The Guardian Legend. By the time it reached the U.S. in 1989, it looked awfully archaic, even with Mr. Iwata’s diligent reprogramming work.
22. The wrong game at the right time?
And even that worked out OK in the end. Nintendo didn’t sell as many copies of Dragon Warrior as expected, but rather than <A HREF=“”>dumping the excess in an Alamogordo landfill, they gave copies away for free as a magazine subscription incentive. You can be sure that free RPG, dated as it may have looked, hooked a lot of kids on the wonders of menu-based combat.
23. A universal langage
If you understand how Dragon Quest works, you understand how a whole lot of games with RPG systems work. Not that Dragon Quest invented those things, of course, but since so many RPGs and RPG-adjacent games were inspired by Dragon Quest, this humble little adventure serves as a sort of Rosetta Stone for the genre that subsequently emerged.
24. And its own little language, too
Dragon Quest games often take place in unconnected worlds, with links between individual games working more like implications than explicit statements. Nevertheless, playing the original 1986 game, you might be surprised by how many elements appear across the entire series—not just iconic monsters, but sound effects, spell classes, and even NPC designs. Dragon Quest conspicuously curates its own heritage, and it does a fine job of it.
©Square Enix/Nintendo
25. Choose your own adventure
Console RPGs are infamous for railroading players into making predetermined choices. Dragon Quest gives you one major choice, right at the end: you can fight the villain you’ve been preparing to destroy for the past 20 or 30 hours. Or you can join him in conquering the world! Both options are valid outcomes!
26. The big boss
If you fight the Dragonlord, you face the toughest foe in the game. The boss’ second form breaks the window frames. It’s pretty scary!
27. This game is bad ending!!
If you decide to see what happens when you say “yes” to evil, the results are somehow even scarier. You don’t see a Game Over, but it’s effectively the same thing: you become frozen forever by the Dragonlord’s side. Creepy music plays, and your menu text turns orange, like when you reach critical health in combat. Your hit points remain untouched, but your experience drops to zero. And that’s how you stay... forever....
28. Or maybe not forever?
If you defeat the Dragonlord, the story continues in Dragon Quest II. If you give in to the Dragonlord, well, the story continues too. In Dragon Quest: Builders. Come to think of it, Dragon Quest: Builders is a masterpiece. Maybe being evil is secretly kind of good?
29-38. And how about those sequels!
Is it cheating to lump 10 points into a single entry? Yeah, well, tough. Each and every one of Dragon Quest’s sequels—up through 2017’s Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age—has built on the foundation of the original while introducing new elements. Each and every one is worth playing! Just be prepared for a rough time with Dragon Quest II, it was precisely the kind of merciless experience that the original very definitely was not.
39. Easy access
Thanks to its enduring popularity, you can easily and legally play just about every mainline entry of the Dragon Quest series today. Between remakes (like Dragon Quest III 2D-HD and Dragon Quest VII Reimagined) and iOS/Android ports, the only games not available to purchase at the moment are the DS-exclusive Dragon Quest IX. Oh, and Dragon Quest X... the MMORPG that has never been released outside of Asia.
40. It’s probably got another 40 years in the tank
The surviving members of the original Dragon Quest team are rushing headlong toward retirement, but the series appears to have a great mentorship system in place. As long as the second generation of designers can maintain the sense of heart and emotional impact (and keep coming up with goofy little guys like Slimes to fight), there’s no reason that the Dragon Quest team can’t keep bringing wonderful new adventures into the world for decades to come. But even if not, well, it’s been a great 40 years so far.