Dragon Quest turned the American computer role-playing game into something a Japanese child could play on a Famicom. Wizardry, Ultima and Henk Rogers’s The Black Onyx had brought dungeons, hit points and experience levels to Japanese computers. In 1986 the publisher Enix put the same ideas on a games console, with a written story, characters by the artist of the manga Dragon Ball, and fights that took no more than a few button presses. Edge credits it with laying out “the fundamentals of the Japanese RPG”. By its third game, queues for a new Dragon Quest were news.
Fast facts
- Released: 27 May 1986 in Japan (Famicom); August 1989 in North America as Dragon Warrior (NES).
- Publisher: Enix in Japan.
- Developer: Chunsoft, founded by Koichi Nakamura.
- Design and scenario: Yuji Horii.
- Character and monster design: Akira Toriyama.
- Music: Koichi Sugiyama.
- Genre: JRPG.
Three people and a contest
The team came together through Enix. Yuji Horii was a freelance writer who programmed games on his own computer, and when he won a game-making contest run by Enix he got, in Edge’s words, “a foot in the door with the publisher with which he’s remained until today”. His first game for Enix was a detective adventure, The Portopia Serial Murder Case (1983), for the NEC PC-6001. For its Famicom version he worked with Koichi Nakamura, another winner of the Enix contest, who went on to found Chunsoft. It was Nakamura who told Enix he wanted to make a role-playing game, and Chunsoft developed the first five Dragon Quest games.
Akira Toriyama drew the characters and the monsters, and he also drew the box and cartridge art. The composer, Koichi Sugiyama, was already a television director and songwriter; he came on board after Enix noticed that he had sent back an appreciative questionnaire card for one of its shogi games. The Famicom gave him very little to work with. “I only had three tracks,” he told Edge, and he built each piece on “melody, harmony and bass”.
The loop
Edge summed up what the three of them made in one sentence: “simple battling earns XP and gold, which awards levels and buys equipment. This allows characters to access new areas of the overworld map and take on new bosses, propelling the story to its conclusion.” The player’s hero is a descendant of the legendary Erdrick. He must rescue King Lorik’s daughter, Gwaelin, and then defeat the Dragonlord in his castle at Charlock to win back the Ball of Light, earning experience points in every fight and spending the gold on weapons and armour, as Nintendo Power explained to American players in 1989. Battles are fought from a menu, one turn at a time, with the monster seen face on as if through the hero’s eyes; the series kept that first-person view until Dragon Quest VII.
The first monster the player meets is a slime. Horii had asked Toriyama for a “pool of slime”; Toriyama drew a smiling blue teardrop that is, as Edge put it, “hardly a threatening introduction to a game”. It became the series’ mascot.
Horii’s rule was that the game had to be easy to understand. “At the first planning meeting we have on the main branch of the Dragon Quest games I remind myself that it must be easy to play,” he told Edge. “There has to be warmth and humanity in the game. Anyone should be able to pick up and play them.” Even death is gentle: a fallen hero wakes up in a church with his experience intact and half his gold gone. The game is still hard work. “Grinding is in and the challenge is high,” Edge wrote of the first game; the player has to fight the same monsters again and again to become strong enough to go on.
A national event
The sequels came quickly: Dragon Quest II in 1987 and Dragon Quest III in February 1988. In its first issue, in the summer of 1988, Nintendo Power reported that Dragon Quest III was “the talk of Japan”, with photographs of the queues and an Enix representative predicting “total sales of 5 million”. Compute! reported in June 1988 that more than a million copies had sold in a single day, that television showed “unbelievably long lines”, and that Japanese authorities reported thefts, assaults and “nearly 300 arrests for truancy among school kids cutting classes to get their hands on the game”.
A well-known story says that Japan then passed a law against releasing Dragon Quest games on school days. The public sources do not support a law. Edge called it “a well-worn tale” that new games come out on a Saturday “rather than the usual Wednesday to avoid mass truancy and sick leave”, and in 2005 Gamasutra reported that Enix itself “had to change its previous policy of releasing new editions on weekdays, after complaints of mass absenteeism from schools and places of work”. The change was Enix’s own decision.
Dragon Warrior
The first game reached America in August 1989, published by Nintendo, as Dragon Warrior: the name DragonQuest already belonged to a pen-and-paper role-playing game owned by TSR. Nintendo Power prepared its readers for it. A preview in May 1989 said that its arrival “represents more than just the release of a new game. It marks the beginning of a new and different direction for NES games”, and that in Japan it was “the game that launched three sequels, and is unmatched in popularity”. The magazine gave the game a feature in its July/August issue and a free 36-page strategy guide bound into its November/December 1989 issue.
In late 1990 Nintendo went further and sent a free copy of Dragon Warrior, with a 64-page Explorer’s Handbook, to Nintendo Power subscribers. According to Wikipedia, which cites Chris Kohler’s history Power-Up, the giveaway was reportedly a way of clearing unsold cartridges and attracted nearly 500,000 new subscribers. Dragon Warrior reached many American players that way, but Dragon Quest never became as big in the West as in Japan. Edge thought the American box art, with an adult fighter facing “a sinuous, vicious-looking” dragon, promised a violent game that the “homely setting and jolly slimes” did not deliver. By 2010 the nine main games had sold about 35 million copies, 53 million with the spin-offs, and more than 90 per cent of those sales were in Japan.
Later games
Final Fantasy, from Square, arrived in December 1987 and began a rivalry that, Edge judged, Enix “was easily winning — on home turf, at least” until the two companies merged in 2003 to form Square Enix. The first two games were ported to the Game Boy Color in 1999 by the Japanese developer Tose. Dragon Quest VIII (2004), the first in fully 3D surroundings, sold three million copies in its first week in Japan and was the first Dragon Quest released in Europe. Dragon Quest IX (2009) moved the main series to the Nintendo DS and broke the series’ sales record.
The three founders stayed with the series for decades. In 2010 Edge found Horii, then 56, still overseeing it through his own one-man company, Armor Project. Sugiyama wrote the music for every main game until his death in September 2021, and Toriyama designed its characters until his death in March 2024. Dragon Quest XII was announced in 2021, on the series’ 35th anniversary, as a darker story “for adults”.
Sources
- Edge issue 217, August 2010, pp. 62–67, “The story of Dragon Quest”: the fundamentals of the JRPG in 1986; Ultima, Wizardry and The Black Onyx; the gameplay loop and “Grinding is in and the challenge is high”; the first-person battles until VII; the slime and the “pool of slime”; Horii’s quotes; death and the church; Horii’s career, the Enix contest and Portopia; Nakamura and Chunsoft; Toriyama’s box and cartridge art; Sugiyama’s questionnaire card, his three tracks and “melody, harmony and bass”; the “well-worn tale” of Saturday releases; the Square rivalry and the 2003 merger; the Dragon Warrior name and TSR; the American box art; sales of 35 and 53 million and over 90 per cent in Japan; Dragon Quest VIII as the first European release; Dragon Quest IX breaking the sales record; Horii’s Armor Project.
- Nintendo Power issue 1, July/August 1988, “NES Journal”, pp. 92–93: Dragon Quest III “the talk of Japan”, the queues, Enix’s prediction of 5 million.
- Compute! issue 97, June 1988, “News & Notes”, “One Million Sold in One Day”: a million copies in one day, the queues, thefts, assaults and nearly 300 truancy arrests.
- David Jenkins, “Student Arrested In Dragon Quest Death Threat”, Gamasutra, 23 February 2005 (web, secondary): Enix changing its policy of weekday releases. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/pc/student-arrested-in-i-dragon-quest-i-death-threat
- Nintendo Power issue 6, May/June 1989, p. 54: the Dragon Warrior preview.
- Nintendo Power issue 7, July/August 1989, pp. 52–53: the Dragon Warrior feature (Erdrick, Lorik, Gwaelin, the Dragonlord, Charlock, the Ball of Light, experience and gold).
- Nintendo Power issue 9, November/December 1989, contents page: the 36-page Dragon Warrior strategy guide insert.
- Retro Gamer issue 114, May 2013, timeline feature: Dragon Quest VIII, its 3D environments and three million copies in its first week in Japan.
- Wireframe issue 40, June 2020, pp. 86–87, feature on Tose: the Game Boy Color versions of the first two Dragon Quest games (1999).
- Wireframe issue 53, July 2021, pp. 26–27: the announcement of Dragon Quest XII, a “dark fantasy tale ‘for adults’”.
- Wikipedia, “Dragon Quest (video game)” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): the release dates in Japan and North America; Nintendo as the North American publisher; the late-1990 subscriber giveaway with its Explorer’s Handbook, its reported purpose and nearly 500,000 new subscribers, citing Chris Kohler, Power-Up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Quest_(video_game)
- Wikipedia, “Dragon Quest”, “Dragon Quest III”, “Koichi Sugiyama” and “Akira Toriyama” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): the release years of Dragon Quest II and III; Sugiyama’s music for every main game and his death on 30 September 2021; Toriyama’s work on every game and his death on 1 March 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Quest · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Quest_III · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koichi_Sugiyama · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Toriyama