About

Dragon Quest is a long-running video game series produced by Square Enix. The series has had eleven main games since its debut in 1986, and has become very popular and influential over its thirty-plus year lifespan, and inspired numerous spinoffs, including anime, manga and film.

History

Dragon Quest was created by Yuji Horii and designed by Akira Toriyama, with music by Koichi Sugiyama.^[1] The first four games in the series were released for the NES in 1986, '87,' 88, and '90. Over the following decades, subsequent entries were released for the Nintendo DS, Playstation 2, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo WIi U, Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Playstation Vita, and Windows (reviews of Dragon Quest I and II by SuperDerek RPGS shown below).

Most early games in the series uses a turn-based combat system common to RPGs. The series released as Dragon Warrior in the United States until Dragon Quest VIII. In the US, the franchise struggled to see the same success as Square Enix's Final Fantasy series, which it inspired, and the series remained mostly popular in Japan. Dragon Quest VIII was the first game to see commercial success in America.

Dragon Quest: Your Story

Dragon Quest: Your Story is an upcoming animated film based off the Dragon Quest series of video games by Square Enix, who also are producing the film. The game will be an adaptation of Dragon Quest V and is due out August 2nd, 2019. On April 3rd, 2019, YouTube account 東宝MOVIEチャンネル premiered the trailer for the film.

Reception

The series has been well-received by critics, with each game on Metacritic^[2] gaining generally positive reviews. The game is a cultural phenomenon in Japan, being considered the country's "national game."^[5] Gamespy has claimed that when asked to draw "slime," Japanese children will draw the character Slime from the series.^[6]

Online Presence

Dragon Quest has a strong online presence, with 105,000 likes on Facebook ^[3] and a subreddit with over 23,000 subscribers.^[4]

Search Interest

External References