Thirty years ago today, May 27, 1986, the very first Dragon Quest was released for Famicom. Japan fell in love and the rest is history. But what about your history with Dragon Quest? Let's take some time to remember this iconic series. What do you think about Dragon Quest? Care to share your nostalgic memories? What's your favorite DQ game and why?
Main series entries:
1986 Dragon Quest
1987 Dragon Quest II
1988 Dragon Quest III
1990 Dragon Quest IV
1992 Dragon Quest V
1995 Dragon Quest VI
2000 Dragon Quest VII
2004 Dragon Quest VIII
2009 Dragon Quest IX
2012 Dragon Quest X
2016 Dragon Quest XI
I own Dragon Warrior/Quest 4, 5, 6, and 8, but I've only completed the first one. This was one of my first RPGs, but one thing the first entry taught me was the importance of saving your money to buy things. I still remember seeing the jump in power when I upgrade my weapons and the concept of better equipment clicked. I think the allure of Final Fantasy distracted me throughout the years, but now I really want to sit down with the other entries in the series.
I played the heck out of DQI back in the day. And I played a fair share of DQVIII less back in the day. That's kind of it I think.
I liked those games, but for whatever reason was always more drawn to Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star. At the same time I always say "I should play more DQ games." I think if they were cheaper on Android, or if they were available at all on PC, I'd be more likely to do so.
Played alot of Dragon Warrior, but never beat it. Recently started Dragon Quest V on the DS and am enjoying it so far. Always loved the series, never really enjoyed the gameplay.
Best quote I have seen about this, from Something Awful user univbee:
if you played Dragon Quest 1 from launch slowly enough to gain 1 level per year, you will have just hit max level. Now go kill the Dragonlord already, he should be a piece of cake now!
My first RPG was Final Fantasy, so when I played Dragon Warrior later on it seemed a bit primitive and didn't really draw my attention. However I borrowed Dragon Warrior 2 from a friend and played that until the last dungeon. Never did finish it before I had to give it back. I enjoyed it but never thought of it as one of the greatest NES games.
When my friends and I rented Dragon Warrior 3 I got hooked. The ability to create your own characters and change classes just really gripped me and I still think of this as my favourite from the series. I didn't finish it as a kid, never owned it - only rented it repeatedly. Several years ago I played through the SNES version with a translation patch on an emulator. Beat it and still think it is my favourite.
Dragon Warrior 4 was the one I had the most play time on as a kid. My mother worked in a store that had video game rentals and they carried Dragon Warrior 4. She was allowed to bring it home for free when it wasn't otherwise rented and I constantly bugged her to bring it. It was a close second to Dragon Warrior 3 in my favourites list for a long time. I eventually beat it and even continued powering up the characters to some ridiculous level. I was sad when the store moved on from renting NES games and this disappeared.
As an adult there was a long gap where I didn't play any Dragon Warrior/Quest games and started to play less and less. Once my parents gave my wife and I a Wii for Christmas that started to change. Several months later I had the Homebrew Channel on it and I was mostly playing a lot of SNES games that I never had before. Dragon Quest 5's translation was one of the highlights and upon completing that I have to say it rates right up with number 4.
I started Dragon Quest 6 on an emulator but didn't get very far and I've never touched Dragon Quest 7. I did play about 15 hours of Dragon Quest 8 but I had a crash that lost some progress for me and I never got back to it. I'd like to get back at it someday as I was enjoying it but the length is fairly intimidating. I don't think I've played any of the spin offs yet, but someday when I have a PS4 I'm sure to pick up a copy of Dragon Quest Heroes.
The DS versions of the Dragon Quest games are on my want list (just never found any good deals on them) and I foresee picking up the 3DS versions too. As an RPG fan this is a series that I have both a nostalgic connection to and a respect for what it means to the genre.
Does anyone remember the Dragon Warrior promotion that Nintendo Power ran in 1990, in which a free copy of Dragon Warrior (née Dragon Quest) for the NES was included with your subscription to the magazine? No? Well admittedly I’m pretty damned old. At any rate, that was how I (as well as most of my friends at the time) first became acquainted with Dragon Quest. The idea of getting a free game alongside a magazine I loved anyway was both marvelous and absurd. It was basically the equivalent of money sprouting from a candy tree. I can still remember the day it came in the mail. Interestingly enough, although it included all the supplementary pack in materials, it didn’t come with the box, but was simply in the plastic pack-in bag. I’ve since learned that the reason behind this promotion was the fact that NoA had vastly overestimated projected sales for Dragon Warrior in NA, and was looking to offload surplus carts in such a way that was still profitable in some way. So rather than bury them in a hole in the desert, boom, 12 year old me was holding a free game bestowed upon me by the wise and benevolent Howard Phillips et al.
What I can’t remember is whether it was my first actual digital RPG, though I’m not even sure I would have thought about it that way at the time (oh the naiveté of youth!). I think I thought of it as sort of a Hybrid between Legend of Zelda (except with less action), and adventure games I had played like King’s Quest (except with more stats). I think it might have been my first overhead RPG although I also may have dabbled slightly with Ultima IV somewhere near the same time span. I don’t remember being absolutely captivated by the game (or at least not in the same way that Final Fantasy would do so within the same year), but it was certainly enough of a taste that I remained enthusiastic about the genre. And the music is pure nostalgia fuel for me, even to this day. While there’s not a huge variety of music in the game, each and every track is memorable and instantly recognizable. In some ways I feel like it was this game that set forth the mission statement that JRPGs would (or should) have amazing music forever after. Dragon Quest laid the framework for a genre that would become known for amazing music. I first played Dragon Quest right around the time that I was also first delving into tabletop RPGs (well let’s be real, at that time AD&D was really the only tabletop RPG that mattered) as well. I’ve not played D&D for years, but to this day when I hear the overworld theme in Dragon Quest, I get the unmistakable urge to crack open a Players Handbook, to once again hear the rattling of rolling dice on hardwood. It takes powerful music to evoke a time and place so strongly, and Dragon Quest has that in spades.
At any rate, and as luck would have it I’ve currently been playing Dragon Quest and I plan on taking down the Dragon Lord tonight in honor of the anniversary. You’ve come a long way baby, and your simplistic charms are every bit as evocative today as they were in 1990! On the other hand, DQ I is still the only Dragon Quest game I’ve completed, so that’s something I’d like to remedy some time in the near future. Happy anniversary Dragon Quest!
Last edited by nullPointer on Fri May 27, 2016 1:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I'm slightly ashamed to say that I've only played the first two Dragon Quest/Warrior games, but I hope to play more as I slowly add them to my collection.
nullPointer wrote:Does anyone remember the Dragon Warrior promotion that Nintendo Power ran in 1990, in which a free copy of Dragon Warrior (née Dragon Quest) for the NES was included with your subscription to the magazine?
This used to be a series I enjoyed quite a lot. I ended up winning my very first game on a bet with my best friend back in high school. He dared me to finish the original one, in one sitting in the afternoon and if I did it I could have the game -- I won. I've never repeated the feat as I prefer taking time on stuff but still cool. I ended up in time with DW2 and 3 shortly after and while 2 was even then annoying 3 I got into and finished. A few years went by, they defected to Sony and I had nothing to do with them other than Dragon Quest 1+2 , 3 and MOnsters 1 on GBC, then the DS #4...that's really it, tried Joker DS which I didn't like though the spin off Rocket Slime was 100% awesome.
