The History of Dragon Quest

While we don’t typically cover JRPGs, it’s worth pointing out that Gamasutra has published a large ten-page history of Chunsoft’s long-running Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest franchise.

By modern standards, the original Dragon Warrior is definitely archaic. At the beginning of the game, you’re a simple hero who’s charged with defeating the diabolical Dragonlord and reclaiming the treasured Ball of Light. Along the way, you’ll need to slay a dragon to save the kidnapped princess. And that’s pretty much it as far as the plot goes. You can only control a single character in battle, and can only fight a single enemy at a time. This is the only NES Dragon Warrior with battles that actually feature backgrounds — the others are fought against a black backdrop.

There are only a handful of spells — including two attack and two healing spells — and the only real strategy involves grinding so you’re strong enough to take down more powerful foes. About all you can do is grind until your character reaches level 30, at which point your hero’s stats are maxed out.

The graphics are ugly, the movement is clumsy, and the interface is cluttered with far more menus than necessary. It’s not enough to move over to a treasure chest to open it — you need to step on top of it, open a menu, and then select the “Check” command. The same thing goes with talking to people, opening doors and using stairs. The few caves you explore are completely dark, requiring that you bring a torch along. And even then, it only lights a single block around your character, so you’re still stumbling around blindly, at least until you get the spell later in the game that increase your sight. If you run out of either, you need to stumble around in the pitch black until you find an exit. You can only save the game at the king’s castle at the beginning of the game, although you can still heal at inns found throughout the land.

I actually remember enjoying the original Dragon Warrior on the NES, though it obviously didn’t hold a candle to cRPGs available at the time.