Having survived the Y2K panic, I spent much of that year dealing with middle school and playing Pokémon. Pokémon Yellow had just come out in the United States the previous year and while I had already owned and played Pokémon Red obsessively for much of 1999, Yellow had Pikachu following behind your player character and there were graphical updates and some other minor upgrades. It was basically the same game as the Red and Blue versions, but I didn’t care. I wanted to try to catch ‘em all again. (Note: I never did catch them all.)
I used to read game magazines regularly and eventually I read that the *true* sequels to Pokémon, the Gold and Silver versions, will be released in the US in late 2000 and I was incredibly excited after seeing the screenshots and some of the new monsters printed in these magazine pages. I spent much of the spring and summer playing Pokémon Yellow but I could only do so much with a game I technically played two times. As soon as it was available to do so, I went to the Babbages at the mall to reserve my copy of Pokémon Gold (my first ever pre-order!). To sate the wait, there were other monster collector games that came out within that time: Digimon World, Monster Rancher, Robopon and the game that did grab my attention: Dragon Warrior Monsters.
OK, let’s go back in time a little bit.
I had this friend, a neighbor kid who I’ll call JR for this story. He was a shy and awkward and chubby kid with glasses and a pair of buck teeth that looked like Spongebob’s. He was the one kid who would tell me false game tips and swear they were true. Despite that, I hung out with him because he liked video games and he lived close by.He had a gaming PC and a lot of consoles, including the NES. Where I’m going with this is that JR was my frequent trading partner in Pokémon and we both waited for Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver to come out. One day, we were playing with the NES and we played games I’ve never played before. One of those games was Dragon Warrior, an archaic-looking role-playing game that he said he and his siblings got for free (likely from the Nintendo Power subscriber deal). I had played Final Fantasy on the NES on my uncle’s NES a few years before and the experience frustrated me. On the other hand, Dragon Warrior was closer to the Pokemon style of combat and I had played Phantasy Star III, Super Mario RPG and Final Fantasy VII before so I knew what RPGs were and Dragon Warrior’s gameplay was really easy to grasp. It was strangely addictive and the monster designs were charming.
Dragon Warrior Monsters came out for the Game Boy Color in early 2000. Developed by Enix and published stateside by Eidos, I learned of its existence from a magazine ad, probably Nintendo Power, I don’t know. I wanted to play a new monster collecting game since the wait for Gold and Silver was a painful wait. What also got me was that it reminded me of that NES game I played, only this time you collect these charming monsters you fought. Collecting the monsters in Dragon Warrior Monsters was different from Pokémon: instead of using a ball to capture a monster, you recruit the monster by feeding them cuts of meat during battle and hope that they’ll join you after defeating them. You also obtain monsters by breeding male and female monsters to create stronger offspring, including “legendaries” like the final boss monsters from the first six mainline Dragon Quest games. Now, to anyone under 20 years old reading this story as of this writing, yes, Dragon Quest and Dragon Warrior are the same franchise: Enix couldn’t use the Dragon Quest trademark outside of Japan due to TSR using the trademark at the time and so they were forced to use the Dragon Warrior name until the release of Dragon Quest VIII, the first mainline DQ game released in Western regions by the newly merged Square Enix.
I was obsessed with Dragon Warrior Monsters and spent so much time trying to obtain stronger monsters and win the tournaments. I even bought the strategy guide to look up breeding charts and I admired the monster illustrations by Akira Toriyama. Dragon Ball Z had become a big deal at the time since it aired on Cartoon Network’s “Toonami” block and the manga was also being localized and published by Viz Communications (now Viz Media) so a lot of American kids were getting exposed to Akira Toriyama. Future Western Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest releases going forward advertised the Toriyama connection in their packaging. It took until Dragon Warrior VII for Enix to use the Akira Toriyama package illustrations for Western releases; previous releases including Monsters didn’t use Toriyama’s art in the packaging or manual illustrations.
I enjoyed Dragon Warrior Monsters for much of the year until I obtained my copy of Pokémon Gold and spent the rest of the year and much of 2001 obsessively playing that. In 2002, I got a used NES and some games and I picked up a cheap copy of Dragon Warrior because I wanted to finish playing it. I eventually finished it that year and I wanted to find the three NES sequels but they were too expensive and so I downloaded the ROMs and played those on an emulator on the PC. I also wanted to pick up Dragon Warrior VII for the PlayStation because the previews from Electronic Gaming Monthly looked interesting and a 100+ hour RPG was something that appealed to a high school student without a social life like me but the one time I saw a copy out in the wild, I didn’t have the money for it until I saved up enough but by that time it was gone. (I eventually bought a copy from eBay about a decade later.)
Later that year, Viz Communications published SHONEN JUMP, a monthly manga magazine based on its weekly Japanese counterpart. In its third issue, there was an article that was published about Dragon Quest that educated a lot of North American readers about the franchise which also included screenshots of the upcoming Dragon Quest VIII for the PlayStation 2 and that game looked much more advanced compared to its comparatively dated-looking predecessor. A few issues later, a demo disc for DQVIII was included with every copy of SHONEN JUMP and like with the Nintendo Power giveaway for the original game, I believe that got some people hooked. When Square Enix released Dragon Quest VIII in the West, they made a savvy marketing decision: every copy of Dragon Quest VIII came with a demo disc of Final Fantasy XII. Final Fantasy was (still is?) the most popular Square Enix IP outside of Japan and so including a demo of their then-most anticipated game to help sell a less-popular game was a genius move. And that move converted a generation of Western RPG fans into Dragon Quest fans.
As of this writing, Dragon Quest XI is the most recent mainline game in the franchise. And it’s the best selling game in the franchise, too. (I could be wrong, so correct me if I am.) It has become a lot of peoples’ first DQ game due to several factors: multi-platform releases, Akira Toriyama’s artwork, the Smash Bros. connection with the “Hero” being a DLC character for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and simply because DQXI is a really good game. If you like role-playing games and you’ve never played a Dragon Quest game, you can’t go wrong with any of the mainline games. The recent HD-2D remakes of the original trilogy have made those games palatable for players accustomed to modern sensibilities.
I love Dragon Quest because while the journey often leads to rewards, the journey itself is the reward. You go to new places, meet new people, face challenges and grow stronger as the journey goes on. And sometimes you'll gamble away your savings at a casino or meet some ladies of the night for a "puff-puff", although those activities are optional. Life itself has its share of challenges and rewards and optional activities (should you desire to partake in them).
As the series creator Yuji Horii has stated time and time again:
"Life is role-playing."
Japanese gamers witnessed the birth of a new legend.
Gamers across the world continue to witness the legend that is DRAGON QUEST.
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