How Dragon Quest Spawned an Urban Legend
We first published this in March, 2018, but we are re-promoting it as part of a new initiative on IGN where we spend a whole month exploring topics we find interesting in the world of video games (and hope you will, too!). April is our Urban Legends month, when we'll take a look at the bizarre, eerie, untold, and otherwise unexplained phenomena within the gaming community.
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I’ve been told the story more than once, and always in the same way. Every time a Dragon Quest game is released, thousands of children will be caught playing truant, and as many grown workers will take a sick day, leading to a measurable drop in productivity across Japan. Don’t forget, there’s no such thing as mandated sick pay in Japan - people were losing money to pay money for a game, just to play it on launch day.
The story continues that this phenomenon became so predictable that the government was forced to step in. The “Dragon Quest Law” was passed - Enix’s games now had to avoid a weekday release and arrive on a Saturday instead. It’s a perfect encapsulation of how popular this series had become – a simple RPG turned legitimate cultural phenomenon.
Like most good stories, it isn’t true. Unlike most stories, however, the truth is almost better.
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The untrue part of the story is really only that the government had to create a law – and that’s only because it never had to. The developers, feeling bad for having created a nationwide issue, essentially created the Dragon Quest Law for themselves.
“Basically,” explains series executive producer Yuu Miyake, “it was the general accepted practice in the industry was to have games shipped out on a Thursday, but there were kids who would skip school to go and buy the games. So we arranged with Nintendo to have Dragon Quest released on a Saturday as a special exception to that.”
It’s a tradition that continues to this day – the latest game, Dragon Quest XI got its own Saturday release, over 30 years after the first game arrived.
Dragon Quest has become an implacable piece of Japanese culture, not simply a game nor even, to use a phrase that makes me a feel a bit sick, a multimedia franchise. Its release is a cause for celebration, hobby shops have entire swathes of space given over to its merchandise, and Luida’s Bar, the restaurant opened as a limited-time celebration of Dragon Quest IX, is now entering its eighth year of business. I’m also fairly sure the old rule that you’re never more than 6 feet away from a rat in London applies to Slime plushies in Tokyo.
That’s down in major part to Yuji Horii, the series’ primary creator, writer and, as Miyake puts it, “head of the fans”. It’s perhaps not a surprise that it would be Horii who became key to the operation - you can trace his drive for success from well before Dragon Quest was conceived. In 1982, Horii was a games writer for Shōnen Jump magazine. Sent out on assignment to report on an Enix game design competition, he decided to secretly enter his own hobby project – a simple tennis game. Looking at the rest of his career, it seems almost inevitable that his game was named among the winners, and Horii had to find a way to report on his own victory.
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In the process he met another winner, programmer Koichi Nakamura – they would go onto create Dragon Quest together after Horii became infatuated with early computer RPG Wizardry. In trying to refine and simplify that game’s style for less powerful ‘80s consoles, while adding a grand fantasy storyline, the pair essentially invented what would go on to be called the JRPG.
As one of the earliest console games to offer thoughtful strategy as opposed to reflex-based action, the first in the series sold incredibly well in Japan. Come Dragon Quest 3 in 1988, it had reached another level. Horii recalls going out personally to see the huge lines of people waiting to buy the game – it’s probably not a coincidence that it was around this time that the Dragon Quest Law was suggested.
In the process, Horii himself has become a part of the myth – the man who created the JRPG, who changed video games, and influenced Japanese culture as a whole. As a marker of his importance, I’ve signed legal documents forbidding me from mentioning where his office is located, for fear of it being mobbed. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Horii%20himself%20has%20become%20a%20part%20of%20the%20myth%20%E2%80%93%20the%20man%20who%20created%20the%20JRPG%2C%20who%20changed%20video%20games%2C%20and%20influenced%20Japanese%20culture%20as%20a%20whole."]
It’s a popularity that’s never quite translated to the west, no matter how good the reviews are. When I ask why a series as superficially similar as Final Fantasy has seen so much more success in the west, Miyake tries to give a reasoned response about the relative popularities of NES (where DQ first flourished) and PS1 (where Final Fantasy hit the mainstream) in each region, but Horii jumps in with a blunt response befitting of the man in charge: “It was basically down to the fact that Enix weren't putting as much much effort into overseas promotion [as Square].”
To me, it’s almost more satisfying that Dragon Quest remains a little mysterious to us while it remains seismic in its home country – how else would we have gotten that urban myth in the first place?
Over three decades on from the original game, some of those children who cut class to play the NES games are now working on the series, while entire new generations wait until the weekend for a chance to play. “There is a lot of pressure,” Horii explains when I ask what it’s like to release games that mean so much to so many people. “I'm always having to think about how we're going to surprise the fans next.”
Horii spends our entire interview downplaying his importance, countering every time I mention his cultural impact with a laugh and a rebuttal. But when I ask about what it’s like to see his work become a piece of his own country, he finally, just for a moment, acknowledges his place as the man behind the myth:
“I really just had this desire to make games that people would like and give enjoyment to people, and as a result of that, it's become what it has. Sometimes I look back and think ‘wow, I really am something special’.”
“Oh you do think that?” jokes his producer. “Yeah, sometimes.”[poilib element="accentDivider"]
Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News, and he didn't get to mention that Horii's office is done up like a castle. It's very odd. Follow him on Twitter.
Dragon Quest 11 PS4 and PC Release Date Announced
Dragon Quest 11: Echoes of an Elusive Age will be released for PS4 and Steam on September 4 in North America and Europe. However, the planned Nintendo Switch version will not be released this year, and the 3DS version released in Japan will not be released in the west at all.
The localised version of the gigantic JRPG comes with a number of additions and improvements, including voiced English dialogue, a Hard Mode option, overhauled menus, a faster dash to speed up exploration, and a first-person camera mode.
This will be the first time a mainline Dragon Quest game will be available on PC in the west.
However, it's a slightly different story on Nintendo platforms. The 3DS version of the game - which was a complete remake of the Japanese PS4 version, played in both pixel art and 3D versions across the console's two screens - will not be localised at any point.
Dragon Quest 11: Expert/Beginner Double Preview
I think I’m a fairly typical westerner, in that I don’t know a great deal about the Dragon Quest series. I know the basic idea - a venerable JRPG franchise that's not so much traditional as it is the tradition - but I can't say I've ever played one before. Thankfully, IGN Japan's Esra Krabbe is a long-time fan, and even reviewed the Japanese version of the latest game (rating it very highly) when it came out last year.
Earlier this year, both Esra and I got a hands-off look at the upcoming localised version of Dragon Quest 11, and thought it would be useful to preview various facets of the game from two distinct angles. Esra will bring the expert opinions, while I’ll be looking at it from the perspective of someone who’s never touched a Dragon Quest game before. If you're from either camp, here's what we think right now.
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It was announced this week that the team would be visiting New York's Citi Field for a meet-and-greet and autograph signing at the game on April 2, teasing a "very special surprise" that fans should "stick around to witness."
The game will see the New York Mets face off against Philadelphia Phillies, and is a great opportunity for a cross-promotion for the Wilpon family, which owns both the New York Mets and the New York Excelsior team.
PSVR Gets a Permanent Price Drop This Week
Sony has announced that the PlayStation VR bundle will get a permanent price drop to $299 USD / £259.99 (no Australian prices available at time of writing) from tomorrow, March 29.
It's a hefty cut, dropping from $399 USD and £349.99.
In the US, the bundle in question includes the headset, a PlayStation Camera and a digital copy of Doom VFR. In Europe, you get PlayStation VR Worlds instead of Doom.
Sony's expecting a big year for PSVR, estimating that 130 more games will arrive for the platform by the end of 2018.
As of last December, Sony's sold 2 million PS VR units - this might go some way toward shifting a few more.
Outlast 2 Patch Adds Features That Were Cut to Avoid Adult Only Rating
Outlast 2 is getting a new "Story Mode" that will make the game much easier, as well as adding in features that were cut from the original release that would have taken the game's M rating up to Adult Only.
Red Barrels announced the update on Steam, saying "we’ve taken the opportunity to reinsert some of the things we had to remove from the original game in order to get an M rating. These changes are not drastic in our opinion and do not impact gameplay, but they had to be made to avoid an Adult Only rating."
Outlast 2 was initially refused classification in Australia due to sexual violence, specifically "a ritualistic orgy.” After some changes by the developer, it eventually got past the board for release.
Xbox One PUBG under £17, Xbox Live 12 Month Gold Membership under £35
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PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds under £17
Grab your copy of one of the best games of 2017 at SCDKey for just £16.36. You will have to apply the promotional code "XBOX3%" in order to get your 3% discount and bring the price down to under £17.
Orcs Must Die! Developer Lays Off Staff
Robot Entertainment has let go 30 members of staff in a strategic decision that sees the studio shift its focus from two projects to just one.
"Over the past 18 months, our studio has had two teams working on different projects," said the studio's CEO Patrick Hudson. "Today, the company is making a strategic shift to focus on a single internal game project.
"Unfortunately, that means we need to resize our team to fit only one project. We've made the very difficult decision to let go of over 30 of our very talented and dedicated developers."
According to the company's LinkedIn profile, the studio has 65 members of staff, meaning the layoffs will see almost half its employees cut.
WTF Is Darkseid Doing On the Justice League?
Three new Justice League titles will be spinning out of the end of Dark Nights: Metal and the subsequent Justice League: No Justice mini-series, which is cool but not entirely unexpected news, save for one detail: Darkseid, the most dangerous villain in the DC Universe, will be joining one of the teams. It turned heads when Lex Luthor joined the Justice League in 2016, but he at least had Earth's best interest in mind, in his own twisted way. Darkseid is in a whole other league of evil.
The three new teams will be your classic Justice League squad, the Justice League Dark to combat supernatural threats, and then the one that recruits Darkseid, Justice League Odyssey, which writer Joshua Williamson has nicknamed “Justice League Space.”