Main Series
Dragon Quest I
Dragon Quest II
Dragon Quest III
Dragon Quest IV
Dragon Quest V
Dragon Quest VI
Dragon Quest VII
Dragon Quest VIII
Dragon Quest IX

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Monsters 1
Monsters 2
Caravan Heart
Joker

Mystery Dungeon Series
Torneko 1
Torneko 2
Torneko 3
Shonen Yangus

Slime MoriMori Series
Slime MoriMori
Rocket Slime

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Above: Artwork of Dragon Quest's hero. It would become a tradition for players to name the hero in each Dragon Quest game.

Above: The princess that the hero must save.

Dragon Quest

(aka Dragon Warrior)

In the early to mid 1980s, RPG series that computer gamers were familiar with consisted of the likes of Wizardry, Ultima, The Bard’s Tale, and Might and Magic. It was a market that was dominated by developers from the West. However, this began to change when in 1989 Enix decided to bring Dragon Quest to North America, thus helping to expose Westerners to Japan’s take on the role-playing genre.

Players were greeted with two primary objectives that were mainstays in fantasy storytelling. First, a great evil, in this case the Dragon Lord, had gotten a hold of a powerful magical object that the game’s hero, a descendent of a legendary adventurer named Erdrick (sometimes also referred to as Loto), would have to retrieve, and while he’s at it, the king would be most grateful if the hero could make some time to save his daughter who happened to get herself kidnapped by a rather unfriendly dragon. Sure it wasn’t anything groundbreaking, but it was more than good enough to keep people’s attention throughout the adventure. An interesting aspect of the game was that from the very beginning players could see their ultimate goal: the Dragon Lord’s castle, as it was just across the river from the castle of the good king that players were trying to help. It was just a matter of finding a way to get all the way over there.

Above: Box Art for the US and Japanese versions of the game

As one might suspect, gameplay in the first Dragon Quest was relatively simple, helping to cement many of the core features that would remain popular in RPGs for years to come. These included random encounters with enemies, a turn-based combat system, and the relatively linear fashion in which the game’s story unfolded.  Players would wander around overworld and dungeon maps from an overhead perspective, and when attacked by an enemy, a portrait of it would pop up, along with a menu full of battle options, and combat would commence.

Looking back, it's interesting how all of the series key creators all came together.  The brains behind it, Yuji Horii, was actually a literature major, and got his start as a freelance writer in various mediums.  It was only in 1982 when he entered a game making contest being held by Enix that Horii really got interested in creating games, after flying out to the US for Applefest '83, where he saw Ultima and Wizardry, and became inspired to make more games.  This led to himself, along with Koichi Nakamura and Yukinobu Chida, making The Portopia Serial Murder Case, and adventure game for the NES.  This was important, as this game got the attention of Koichi Sugiyama, who was already famous for his music composition.  He rather liked this game, and sent a letter to Enix stating so, which led to the publisher approaching him to contribute music when development got underway for the first Dragon Quest.  As for artwork, Akira Toriyama was asked if he would like to do this at a time when he was fast becoming famous for his Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball series.  This actually proved to be an easy task, as Horii was already friends with him, having worked together at popular manga Shonen Jump in the past.

Above: The original Dragon Quest may have looked simple, but it still kept players attention just fine.

When the game made its way to North America, it underwent a series of changes, not the least of which was Enix having to rename it Dragon Warrior. The reason for this was that pen and paper RPG maker TSR had released a series of games in the early 1980s called Dragon Quest, and as such there would have been trademark conflicts if Enix had released their NES game under the same name, hence the change. This actually remained the case until 2003, when TSR chose not to renew the trademark. Since it was abandoned, Enix could then release all games in the series as “Dragon Quest” in North America. There were also a number of other changes that had to be made to the original Dragon Quest before it crossed the Pacific. First, there was a number of religious and more mature themes touched upon in the game that Nintendo felt may not be appropriate for a North American audience, so Enix needed to weed these out during the localization process. The game’s visuals also saw an improvement, with characters and environments looking a little more fleshed out.

While this was certainly a simple game, that was a large part of what Horii was going for in the original Dragon Quest. He liked the complexity of RPGs, as this was a feature that one didn't see a lot of on the NES at the time.  However, he wanted to make the experience accessible, which required him to walk a delicate line while making the game so that it provided a high level of depth without overwhelming players. Ultimately, this is what he accomplished, catapulting Dragon Quest to fame, leading to anime and manga series in the process (the anime series were Dragon Quest (which aired briefly in the US), and Dai no Daibouken, while the manga were Dai no Daibouken, Emblem of Roto, and Dragon Quest Maboroshi no Daichi). In time, the game would also be remade and combined with Dragon Quest II, first on the SNES, and then the Gameboy Color.