"Dragon Quest in the Japanese Culture" By Hidetoshi Nakahashi
In May, 1986, Dragon Quest was released in Japan. At that time, not many Japanese people knew
what Role-Playing Games were.
The three creators of the Dragon Quest series are very popular in Japan. One is Akira
Toriyama, a cartoonist whose masterpiece is "Dragon Ball". Another is Koichi Sugiyama,
a composer. Not one Japanese person exists that does not know his name.
Last is Yuuji Horii, the scenario writer. All drama written by him are a hit.
Of course, Dragon Quest I was a big hit in Japan because the creators were very popular and
the game system was very common. At that time, there was the Ultima series, but these
games were too complicated for Japanese people.
Dragon Quest II was released a year after Dragon Quest I. Dragon Quest II was the
most popular game at that time. The Dragon Quest I and Dragon Quest II rom cassette did
not have a battery backup system as Dragon Warrior I and Dragon Warrior II did. The way of
saving was with a password system. Dragon Quest I had a 17 Japanese character password and
II had a 52 Japanese character password. Many people made errors in writing down
or inputing passwords. However, the password system was an interesting system.
Most passwords had no meaning, but there were some passwords that had meaning that
allowed people to start a special game (for example "slime is poor but skeleton is rich").
Dragon Quest III was released one year after Dragon Quest II. Releasing DQIII caused many
problems. At the day of its release, some children were robbed of their DQIII rom cassette
by high school students. Some children were absent from school to buy DQIII. These problems
were told to the Japanese Diet. The Diet determined that the Dragon Quest series would have
to be released on Sundays or holidays. So Dragon Quest IV to VI were released during the
holidays.
Every Japanese newspaper and television news reported that DQIII was a problem.
The name of "Dragon Quest" became famous after that. In Japan, the pronoun of games is "DraQue."
For example, a child plays a game that is not Dragon Quest, and his father says, "My son plays
DraQue." In Japan, many people who don't play games think that all action games are Mario and
that all RPG's are Dragon Quest. Of course, one of most famous game titles is Dragon Quest.
The Dragon Quest series permeated Japan after DQIII.
The spell of healing is "Hoimi" in Japanese Dragon Quest. In US Dragon Warrior, the spell of
healing is "Heal" and means healing. But the Japanese word Hoimi did not have amy meaning before
Dragon Quest. Therefore, the word was made by Dragon Quest.
If a child is hurt, another child says, "Hoimi." Dragon Quest made a new Japanese Word.
If you said to a Japanese person, "Draw a picture of Slime!" The Japanese person would draw
the Slime of Dragon Quest like an onion. The Japanese feel that Dragon Quest is very close to
themselves.
For the Japanese, the Dragon Quest series is more famous than Windows and Bill Gates. And,
of course, the opening music of Dragon Quest is more famous to the Japanese than Beethoven's
No9 symphony.
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