Dragon Quest (Doragon Kuesuto)

A.K.A Dragon Warrior in United States, this is the first RPG of the Dragon Quest saga. It was released for the Famicom in 1986 and 3 years later, released in West with substancial improvements in graphics and a special battery to save the game.

Plot

Dragon Warrior's plot is a simplistic medieval "rescue the princess, slay the dragon king, and get the orb of light" story.

The game begins when the player assumes the role of a stranger who arrives at Tantegel Castle. A castle guard tells him that a dragon has captured the princess and is holding her captive in a distant cave. Determined to rescue the princess and defeat the Dragonlord, he discovers an ancient tablet hidden inside a desert cave; carved on the tablet is a message from Erdrick that outlines what the hero needs to do to follow in Erdrick's footsteps and defeat the Dragonlord.

About the authors

Yuji Horii is a Japanese video game designer and scenario writer best known as the creator of the Dragon Quest series. He also supervised and wrote the scenario for Chrono Trigger, as well as the first visual novel adventure game Portopia Serial Murder Case

Horii used to work as a freelance writer for newspapers comics and magazines, some of them related to videogames.

In 1982, a shonen manga tabloid publisher named Enix, broke into games publishing by holding a PC game programming contest with an impresive ¥1 million prize for the winners.

Horii needed some years to came up with the full idea of Dragon Quest, in that time, he teamed with Koichi Nakamura to develop Portopia, maybe his own sandbox to test some formulas later applied to Dragon Quest

One of the problems that Horii faced was the needle to approach the RPG genre to casual players, who were the potential audience in Famicom/NES.

After Portopia’s Success, Nakamura and Horii (Chunsoft founders) created, with Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball) and Koichi Sugiyama (japanese composer), this game.

Left to Right: Koichi Nakamura, Akira Toriyama, Koichi Sugiyama

Specs and MSX Port:

CPU	Zilog Z80A @ 3.58 MHz
RAM	8 kB - 128 kB 16 kB of VRAM
ROM	32 kB (BIO y MSX BASIC)
Resolution	256 x 192 x 16 colours 32 sprites
Input	Keyboard

The MSX port of Dragon Warrior is somewhat inferior to it’s Famicom version, given that the MSX did have quite the graphical chops that the Famicom contained. Sprites in the MSX Dragon Quest are less detailed and the colors are more muted. Another point that works against the MSX version is the hardware’s inability to smoothly scroll the screen. Because of this it is as if the screen in being re-drawn with every step you take, which ultimately causes the screen to flash with each step.

Enix released both Dragon Quest I and II on the MSX, however, by the time the third game came was ready for release, the MSX’s popularity was in decline and the Famicom was out in astronomical numbers, making a port of part III unnecessary.

Facts

It was inspired by Wizardry and Ultima two of the biggest and most successful rpgs from the West.

The Slime Monster is Dragon’s Quest mascot, maybe the most iconic Toriyama’s design after Saiyans, a slime is at the same level of Pikachu (pokemon) or Chocobo (Final Fantasy). He even had its spin-off games.

The series had to change its name in the West because of D&D’s tabletop game DragonQuest.

The original Final Fantasy American version included an easter egg that some people considered an insult. In the town of Elfheim, there exists a gravestone that reads “Here lies Erdrick, 837-866, R.I.P”. Erdrick is the name of the protagonist of Dragon Quest.

As Dragon Quest series were not as successful abroad as they were in Japan, the magazine Nintendo Power offered a free copy to their subscribers in America to shift the excess of stock

When Dragon Quest III was released on Wednesday the 10th of February 1988, there were reports of mass-truancy among school children (over 300 cases), and an even higher number of adults calling in sick to work all across Japan. The legend states that the Japanese government received so many complaints from educators and employers, they were forced to draft a law that specifically named the Dragon Quest series as being unable to release new games on a weekday.

The truth of the matter is that Enix imposed this rule upon themselves. It was they who had received the complaints, and they were worried that it might affect the release of future games. Every Dragon Quest title from that point on was released on a weekend. This rule stayed in effect until the release of Dragon Quest X in 2012, which was released on a Thursday

Throughout the Dragon Quest games, the player would encounter women in towns that would proposition them. They would ask to perform a “Puff Puff” on the player in exchange for gold. If you paid for this service, then the screen would go black, and text would appear on screen suggesting that something sexual happened. These scenes were generally cut out of the Western releases of the games (but not their remakes).

Dragon Quest’s Legacy:

“Bits and pieces of Dragon Warrior had been seen in video games before, but never all sewn up together so neatly. DW's incredible combination of gameplay elements established it as THE template for console RPGs to follow.” - William Cassidy, The GameSpy Hall of Fame: Dragon Warrior

Dragon Quest is noted as a turning point in games history. As it’s undoubtedly the genre builder for RPG videogames, the game itself was some kind of a filter of mechanics and ideas shown in other games, defined a full template for future ones and replaced D&D as the model to follow.