Dragon Quest (series): Difference between revisions

Dragon Quest was created by Yūji Horii, who has been the scenario director since. The series monster and character designs, as well as box art, are done by famed ''Dragon Ball'' manga artist, Akira Toriyama.[9] All of the music for the ''Dragon Quest'' series has been composed by Koichi Sugiyama.[4] ''Dragon Quest'' games have been developed by [[Chunsoft]], [[Heartbeat]], [[Artepiazza]], and, starting with ''Dragon Quest VIII'', [[Level-5]].[10] Horii's own company, [[Armor Project]], is in charge of the ''Dragon Quest'' games, which were published by Enix and, since [[Square Enix Merger|April 2003]] by Square Enix. While Toriyama is the series' character designer, the primary designs are first conceived by Horii, before being handed to Toriyama to re-draw under Horii's supervision.[11] When Horii first created ''Dragon Quest'', most people doubted that a fantasy series with swords and dungeons instead of science fiction would become popular in Japan; but the series has become a phenomenon there.[12]

''Dragon Quest'' is not nearly as successful outside Japan, having been eclipsed primarily by ''Final Fantasy'' and possibly by other RPG series. Because of [[Enix America Corporation]]'s closure in the mid 1990's, the SNES versions of ''[[Dragon Quest V]]'' and ''[[Dragon Quest VI]]'' were never officially released in North America. In Europe, none of the games have seen release prior to the spin-off ''[[Dragon Warrior Monsters]]'' and then ''[[Dragon Quest VIII|Dragon Quest: Journey of the Cursed King]]''. With the merger of Square and Enix in 2003, the number of places in which ''Dragon Quest'' games are released has greatly increased.[12] In May 2008, Square Enix announced localizations of the Nintendo DS remakes of ''Dragon Quest IV'', ''V'', and ''VI'', collectively called by Square Enix the [[List of Name Changes in the Zenithia Trilogy|Zenithia trilogy]], for North America and the PAL region.[13][14] With this announcement, all the main games in the Dragon Quest series will now have seen release outside Japan at least once.

The ninth installment, Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, was released in Japan for Nintendo DS in July 11, 2009. In North American it was released a year later in July 11, 2010 and a few days later in Europe on July 23 while Australia and New Zealand got the game the following month on August 10.  

The tenth installment of the main series, Dragon Quest X, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) and it was released on August 2, 2012 only in Japan for the Wii, Wii U (2013), Microsoft Windows (2013), Android (2013), iOS (2013), Nintendo 3DS (2014), PlayStation 4 (2017) and Nintendo Switch (2017).

The typical ''Dragon Quest'' plot involves a certain villain to be defeated at the end of the game, usually one who threatens the world in some way. However, the plotline often consists of smaller stories involving different NPC's the player meets as the adventure goes on.[16] The games themselves feature a number of religious overtones—saving the game (in later games) and reviving characters who have died is performed by clergy in churches. Priests are often seen wandering around the overworld of ''[[Dragon Warrior Monsters]]'' and have the ability to heal. The final enemy in some of the ''Dragon Quest'' games is known as the Demon Lord. For instance, in ''Dragon Warrior VII'', the Demon Lord, known as [[Orgodemir]] in that particular game, is the final boss, and there is also a sidequest to battle [[God]] himself.[8] The first four ''Dragon Warrior'' titles suffered from substantial censorship in their North American localizations, largely in keeping with Nintendo of America's content guidelines at the time, which placed severe restrictions on religious iconography and mature content. When these games were remade for the Game Boy Color, many of these censorships were taken out.[17] Since ''Dragon Warrior VII'', the games have been kept similar to their original versions when going through localization.[18]

Dragon Quest's North American name was changed due to a trademark conflict with the role-playing game ''DragonQuest'', which was published by veteran wargame publisher SPI in the 1980s until the company's bankruptcy in 1982 and purchase by TSR, which then published it as an alternate line to ''Dungeons & Dragons'' until 1987.[3] In 2003, Square Enix registered the ''Dragon Quest'' trademark in the United States, and has since not marketed any product under the ''Dragon Warrior'' name since the North America 2005 release of ''[[Dragon Quest VIII]]''.

| ''[[Dragon Warrior Monsters]]''<br /><small>''Dragon Quest Monsters''</small>

File:DQ30th Anniversary.png|30th Anniversary

File:DQ Museum art.png|Heroes from ''Dragon Quest I-X''.