Why Dragon Quest Has Always Been So Much More Popular in Japan | Den of Geek
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By Margaret David | February 4, 2023 | Share on Facebook (opens in a new tab)<br>Share on X (opens in a new tab)<br>Share on Linkedin (opens in a new tab)<br>Share on email (opens in a new tab)<br>Comments count:0
Buried on YouTube is a grainy video of a Japanese news broadcast. Even if you don’t speak Japanese, the footage is clear enough. It’s February 1988, and throngs of people are lining up for the new Famicom video game, Dragon Quest III . A man with a loudspeaker keeps one line orderly as it twines past trees and storefronts. Frantic shopgirls unbox dozens of copies. A nearby scramble crossing is jam-packed. It’s a video game launch so massive that it spawned a wild urban legend that used to pop up on old GameFAQs forums and schoolyards: The Japanese government had to step in and write a law mandating that future Dragon Quest games could only be released on the weekend to avoid civil disruption.
It turns out there’s no such law on the books. However, it is true that Enix was so concerned about the reports of school absenteeism and other issues that they would shift all future Dragon Quest release dates to the weekend. It’s a phenomenon the likes of which we’ve rarely seen in the West. Not even new Pokémon games ever caused that kind of upset among players in America. Yet, despite being a society-shaping phenomenon in Japan, the Dragon Quest franchise would never hit those kinds of sales numbers or reach anywhere near that level of popularity outside of its home country.
Figuring out why arguably the greatest JRPG franchise in history remains something of a black sheep elsewhere comes down to three reliable but annoying factors: Timing, marketing, and sexiness. Here’s how it happened.
Start the Battle Music
Compared to Final Fantasy (its closest historical counterpart), Dragon Quest was first out of the gate in both Japan and America where it was released in 1986 and 1989, respectively. The JRPG that formed the template for decades of games to come made a heroic effort to woo uncertain Western gamers. Dragon Quest publisher Enix even partnered with Nintendo Power magazine to give away free copies of Dragon Warrior (as it was rebranded for North American gamers). The developers even went to the trouble of streamlining the game’s save system into something more user-friendly than the original password states.
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Yet, the most significant alteration that Enix made to convince Western gamers to give Dragon Warrior a shot involved the game’s signature art style. Aware of the American popularity of Wizardry and Ultima (both of which inspired the gameplay of the fledgling franchise), Dragon Warrior ‘s North American marketing materials were redesigned to boast generic medieval fantasy artwork instead of the Akira Toriyama sketches that made Dragon Quest unique.
Today we can look back on that move with a bit of a wince. For Japan, the cute aesthetic from one of their biggest manga legends (yes, that’s the Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball ) was key to its lasting charm. The simple slime Toriyama designed for Yuji Horii became the series mascot, while in America, we still give slime-shaped game controllers a funny look. Whether North American gamers would have been more receptive (or as receptive) to the game’s original art style at that time is one of those questions that will remain unanswered.
Still, the gamble worked. Dragon Warrior gave Enix a foothold as the NES continued to grow its market share. Rival company Squaresoft would launch its first Final Fantasy title one year later, and at that point, the two were still on fairly equal footing.
But the next franchise releases in both series started to upset the balance. When the next Dragon Quest was released in the West as Dragon Warrior II , it was harder than its predecessor, featured a new party system, and didn’t boast significantly improved visuals. Western sales numbers plummeted. Dragon Warrior II sold roughly 150,000 copies in the U.S. compared to the roughly 500,000 premium copies of Dragon Warrior that were sold in that region (not counting free Nintendo Power copies). Meanwhile, Dragon Quest II sold roughly 2.4 million copies in Japan. As for Dragon Quest III , the game that broke into Japan’s evening news, it sold less than 100,000 copies in the U.S. compared to the nearly 4 million copies of the game that were sold in its home country.
Even in its earliest days, the gap between the Dragon Quest/Warrior ‘s popularity in Japan vs. the West was becoming clear. However, the next generation of console gaming would make it clear that Western gamers weren’t entirely opposed to the idea of falling madly in love with a JRPG franchise.
The ol’ Razzle-Dazzle
Final Fantasy developer Squaresoft waited until the release of the...