The games that can define consoles, generations, and beyond aren’t always considered the greatest or even the most memorable. In the earlier decades of video game history, the frighteningly quick movement of technology meant some of those most important games were relegated to a note in history rather than become beloved replayable classics.
When the legacy wanes, we’ve seen juggernauts of the RPG genre reinvent the touchstones, remaking, remastering, and reimagining the games that blew our minds many moons ago. The bigger the original audience, the harder it is to recreate the original experience. For those forgotten touchstones, the opportunity a second chance provides can be crucial. For Dragon Quest, the series needs to remind people why its influence was significant enough to essentially create an entire sub-genre: the JRPG.
And we’ll hopefully be getting that with the HD Remaster of the 1986 original and its sequel, but for now, it’s worth going into why Dragon Quest deserves an RPG Hall of Fame spot.
By the time Yuji Horii had gotten to grips with creating the very first Dragon Quest, we already had a decade of the RPG genre in video game form, with the D&D and Tolkien-inspired experiments on mainframe computers to the first home computer RPGs such as Rogue, Wizardry, and Ultima. Horii was particularly inspired by the home computer RPGs of the early 1980s but decided to take a more story-led approach with a relatively simplified way of playing. These would be the building blocks for the JRPG sub-genre and the start of a shared timeline trilogy of Dragon Quest games.
The backstory behind Dragon Quest and its immediate sequels is that long ago in the kingdom of Alefgard, a brave warrior by the name of Erdrick vanquished an evil beast and subsequently restored light to the land with the help of the handily-named Ball of Light. With the world at peace, Erdrick handed off the Ball of Light to the King, and everything was pretty chill for a long time. It probably helped that the Ball of Light could cause shorter winters, which perhaps put folk in a better mood and allowed for more crop-growing, beach-going, yoga sessions and the like.
But, of course, there always has to be a curmudgeon in the congregation, and one guy was having none of that Ball of Light faff and went to admirable levels of isolation by secluding himself in a cave. As luck (or misfortune, depending on your perspective) would have it, he stumbles upon a dragon and discovers he can control it. So he does what anyone would do: declares himself the Dragonlord, sets fire to the nearby towns, and steals the Ball of Light. Top-level spite there.
Dragon Quest: A Tale As Old as Time
As a setup for an RPG story, it feels pretty standard now. C’mon, the bad guy gets ahold of a powerful object, and good must save the day is a tale older than Tolkien. Yet there’s a reason some variance on this has been the plot structure for plenty of successful RPGs in the four decades since. Horii’s decision to invest more in the story and use that tried-and-true fantasy adventure story formula paid dividends for the genre as a whole, let alone the JRPG sub-genre.
For the Western world, it would be a few years before the game made any impact, as it was finally released in the US in 1989 under the moniker Dragon Warrior (somewhat amusingly, due to a clash with a tabletop RPG named DragonQuest). It was misunderstood from the get-go with that now legendary Akira Toriyama artwork scrubbed off the cover for something more Western. Since Dragon Quest was first launched in Japan, The Legend of Zelda has become the de facto RPG adventure of the N.E.S., so what made it stand out stood out a little less. Much of the game’s dialogue and item descriptions were less lost in translation and more or less toned down for Western audiences.
So it is not so surprising it wasn’t the smash hit it might have been, but you have to wonder if Nintendo’s later decision to send free copies of the game (worth $50, by the way) to Nintendo Power magazine subscribers. It’s long been thought this was Nintendo finding a way to offload unsold units of a game it expected to do better. Still, whatever the reason, it could well have helped Dragon Quest live on in the West, and later, the series would finally get some recognition and eventually (eight games in) get its name back.
Now, you can play the original game largely as intended on Nintendo Switch, and compared to its successors, it feels like more of a curio than an essential RPG. Again, a new HD version will modernize the game without losing its retro charms. So we can get a chance to appreciate a crucial game in the history of RPGs anew.
