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Dragon Quest 1? In 2025?!

[Notes I wrote while playing the game, reading:

While the actual "first JRPG" is a question that has no clear-cut answer, if there ever was a christening of the genre, chances are, it was Dragon Quest. That’s what, but much more importantly, why? 2025 has seen lots of interesting reveals and releases (not to mention just under 40 years of games and systems that also exist), but it was nice to play something different from the wildly expansive productions we have these days.

This granddaddy of a game has also been on my radar for quite some time, and, in managing to land comfortably within all three of my then interests in gaming (NES games, the 3DS and JRPGs), I decided it was high time I actually play the dang thing; even better that it's the inaugural review, it just works. I should mention that I’m quite a slow (or shall I say meticulous?) writer, and while I’m posting about it now, I mostly played this back in May. Just keep that in mind if you see present-tense writing or out of place past-tense; sometimes I miss things here and there.

Now, there are plenty of versions to play, and generally I enjoy playing originals, but in this case I've opted for the Japan-only 3DS release, since I've also been on a bit of a kick with that system, too. Notably, this version features a map, autosave, quicksave, saving as a whole (which was included in the original English release, but NOT the Japanese one!), and most importantly to me, contextual buttons. There are also other, less gameplay altering changes such as updated art and the orchestration of that now timeless soundtrack.

Now, for a quick TLDR:

With that done and dusted, it's onto our adventure log.

Starting with the story, it's exactly what you'd expect knowing the clichés of the genre, since, again, this game was the granddaddy trendsetter of JRPGs:

The shard of light has been stolen by the malevolent dragon lord, and the prophecy states that the descendant of Lotto (Erdrick, for us Anglos) will come around to rough him up good and get things set straight.

Oh, and his daughter has been kidnapped, too.

Interestingly, you don't actually need to rescue her to get to the credits, but the game doesn't seem to mention that anywhere so you'd only know the king is a bit of a bum father if you yourself are a bum hero.

Shame on you, princess deserters.

In a silly way, I actually found it quite refreshing to have a straight ball story, since I could comfortably exchange my reading comprehension cap for my dunce cap and still understand what's going on; I was playing this game in Japanese, after all, and that's far from my mother tongue.

Or, that's what I would say if this wasn't a NES game, where you have to talk to everyone, and the game expects you to make the connections between NPC chit chat and your goal.

This isn't to say I dislike that, I actually really enjoy it, but for a moment there I thought I might've gotten off lightly with regards to reading... and so the comprehension cap goes back on.

Speaking of figuring things out, the 3DS version uses the bottom screen as a map, and though I felt sort of handicapped by having it, at least it's only the overworld. It didn't map the dungeons, and neither did I; I didn't draw my own maps, nor did I use anyone else's. I'm one of those people that wanders around and kinda sorta internalizes the layout, then just hopes for the best for the rest of it.

There are a grand total of 4 (I think) dungeons, and 5 towns, so other than the walking and grinding this game is actually rather lickety split, further helped by exclusively one on one combat; you're never overwhelmed by dudes, though sometimes a dastardly chimera will get the jump on you.

It's interesting that they went with one on one combat, seeing as the inspirations for the game (Wizardry and Ultima) had both already incorporated multiple party members into it by the time this game had come out.

On one hand, it manages to have some novelty even in the year of 2025, but on the other hand I can definitely see why it's still novel: it's almost entirely a dead end.

Most combat ends up a sequence of slapping each other really really hard, and seeing who takes more of it before getting bored to death;

This is fine for one game, but it quickly becomes evident how little room for growth there is here, so while it's perfectly fun for the runtime, I'm glad they changed it up for the following games.

Speaking of sequels, everyone knows there's a bajillion Dragon Quest games, and anyone who's played games is fairly likely to have encountered it at some point.

Did you know, however, that with the American release of this game, Nintendo printed a gorillion copies of the game, expecting it to sell like hotcakes in America?

I'm sure you realize I wouldn't be mentioning this if it went that way, because JRPGs at the time were new and fairly unusual, AND THAT'S SCARY!

Nintendo then had a problem on their hands, a problem one million copies of Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior, in this case) in size. Yeowch.

And then they did something unthinkable: they gave them away. They gave away hundreds of thousands of copies of Dragon Warrior to subscribers of Nintendo Power, which had recently made the jump from a free publication, to a paid one.

Keep in mind here, the inflation adjusted cost of games then is [COST OF GAMES], multipled by 500,000 (the only estimate of distributed copies I could find).

This is the revenue they didn't generate with sales, and it's an even bigger loss when you consider the money for shipping and logistics of MAIL ORDER DISTRIBUTION for every single distributed copy.

According to this ((link opens in a new tab)) 70,000 mail-in vouchers received per hour, over seven 19-hour days. What a nightmare.

This was an extremely expensive gamble to fix an extremely expensive mistake on Nintendo's part, but, lo and behold, people like free games!

The campaign was an incredible success for getting the game to consumers, thereby introducing the genre to huge numbers of players. It also had the effect of bolstering the readership of Nintendo Power, which I'm sure was a nice side benefit.

That being said, it at least was poorly received enough at Nintendo that they ended up not licensing the second and third games for their Western releases, as is said to have been the original intention; Mother 1 and a couple of the Final Fantasy entries seemed to have also been caught in the crossfire here, or so I've read.

The whole ordeal was so chaotic that Nintendo even printed shirts for staff that read "I survived the 1990 Dragon Warrior mailing." I'd sure as something be rocking that shirt hardcore after working the hours they had to put in.

With a three year gap between the Japanese and English releases of the game, I can't say I'm surprised it underperformed in sales.

The NES port of Ultima Exodus had already come out in February 1989, a whole 6 months ahead of Dragon Warrior, and had some favourably comparable features (multiple characters in your party, for one).

It gets worse if you expand the scope to include non-RPG games, where it's then competing with titles like Marble Madness, Faxanadu, Mega Man 2, Ducktales, and even Ninja Gaiden. There's more, of course, but these are some of the most notable ones.

Basically, Dragon Warrior was old news by the time it hit America.

Moving on from there, it's at this point in the review I'd probably be getting to the sound (and everything else, too), but to be perfectly honest I've been stopped here for two days now [Correction: a month ( ദ്ദി ˙ᗜ˙ )] and still can't think of anything; I'm not much of a music critic, you see.

Like many people exposed to the series young, the orchestral theme has a semi-permanent place in my heart, and most, if not all entries in the series use the same sound effects for the details.

It's in this way that I imagine Dragon Quest is a comfort series for many people. Each new entry doesn't change what isn't necessary, so no matter where you start or where you end up, no matter how long it's been, the games make it easy to feel right at home.

I suppose I’d consider myself one of those people, too, even though I really only played Rocket Slime over and over again; if anything, I think it's more to do with Toriyama's timeless art linking DQ (via Rocket Slime) and Blue Dragon, which I've only just remembered my affection for as I sit here typing away. I barely recall (but still kinda recall) watching the show and playing the Xbox 360 game with my brothers. Maybe.

I don't know, it's a pretty vague memory, but that's that for my little aside. As I was saying previously, Dragon Quest is a sort of comfort series for many people, and I think it's not only nice to have those, but also very important: something to do when you don't feel like doing anything else, or in our case, play.

I don't need to think about playing the DQ games, regardless of which one it is, even, simply because it's just been around for so long.

So, do I think DQ 1 is good? in 2025?

It's definitely old as hell, and you can really tell that when you play it, but it's also the beginning of something really great that means a lot to a huge number of people. If you're interested at all, I would probably hazard a suggestion that the HD2D remake (which just recently had its launch date revealed for October 30th of this year) is going to be a more fun experience overall these days, but there's definitely still value to be found in a (semi) original experience if you're looking for something to try.

I'll call it here for this one, since it's taken me well in abundance of the original amount of time I planned to have this out, which seems to be something of a continued uphill battle.

Expect more posts on games coming from my draft archives in the near-enough future, just don't expect them to be fully complete or edited and the like. Particularly if you're someone who knows me from streaming as Fuza, consider it my thanks for sticking around through all of my extremely, extremely unproductive stints.

Next stop: YouTube-ification? That was the original goal, but we'll see how long it takes me to get there. Anyways, that's enough for now, take care, reader.