It can be safely said that the Dragon Quest and the Final Fantasy series are the cornerstones for most of the current Japanese RPG games that we enjoy today. Though many RPG fans in the US know of and love the Final Fantasy series, what about it's competitive counterpart? Dragon Quest is the Role-Playing series that most Japanese people would tell you began the entire Japanese RPG craze.

In on May 5, 1986, Dragon Quest was released in Japan. At that time, not many Japanese people knew what Role-Playing Games were. Dragon Quest was originally created for the MSX personal computer and Nintendo's Famicom.

The three creators of the Dragon Quest series are very popular in Japan. One is Akira Toriyama, a cartoonist whose masterpiece is "Dragon Ball", Koichi Sugiyama, a composer, and last, Yuji Horii, the scenario writer, all dramas 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 (January 26, 1987) 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 cartridge 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 inputting 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 (February 10, 1988) after Dragon Quest II. The release of DQ III caused many problems. At the day of its release, some children were robbed of their DQ III cartridge by high school students and some children were absent from school to buy DQ III. These problems were told to the Japanese Diet. The Diet determined that the Dragon Quest series would have to only be released on Sundays or holidays. So Dragon Quest IV, V and VI were released during the holidays.

All Japanese newspapers and television news reported that DQ III 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 exploded in Japan after DQ III. 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 any meaning before Dragon Quest. If a child is hurt, another child says, "Hoimi." Dragon Quest made a new Japanese Word.

Dragon Quest I, II and III were so popular that remixes were made for the newly released Super Famicom system with updated graphics and sounds. Dragon Quest I & II were released on one Remix cartridge in 1993. Then the Dragon Quest III Remix was released in 1996.

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.

The world of Dragon Quest was soon no longer confined to the cartridge, as it also manifested in the form of toys, stationary, and of course, anime. There was a short anime series based upon the series, which was called "Dragon Warrior". It aired in the United States in late 1980's/early 1990's, and thirteen episodes were aired. This is what makes Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior unique from many game series; it went far beyond its cartridge beginnings.

With DQ III ended the first Trilogy of the Dragon Warrior series, Roto (The Erdrick Series). Dragon Quest IV started The Tenku (Heaven Series) and continued through DQ V and DQ VI. DQ V and DQ VI were never released to the US with "programming bugs" being cited as the reason.

Also released was a spin-off game featuring Torneko (Taloon) from Dragon Quest IV where you play as Torneko to become the greatest merchant in the world. This game featured randomly generated dungeons with many of the favorite monster groups from the previous DQ games.

Many years passed, then surprisingly in 1999 Enix released a GameBoy color to the US along the lines of Pokémon, called Dragon Quest Monsters. You play Terry as he collects monsters and tries to save his sister.

With the success of Dragon Quest Monsters, Dragon Quest I & II were released to the US in one GameBoy Color cartridge on September 09, 2000. Dragon Quest III for the GameBoy Color has been released in Japan and now since has come to the US.

And in 2001 Dragon Quest VII expected to be released to the US to continue the original series of games, which has done very well in Japan since its release on September 26, 2000.

Recently announced Dragon Quest VIII has a projected finish date in 2004.