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Once upon a time, in a game studio across the pond, a fellow named Yuji Horii wanted to create a game from a genre that had not seen much success in Japan. Games like Wizardy and Ultima had seen success in the western world, but not so much in Japan. Horii and his team decided to take certain elements from those games, such as the full screen maps and stat-based encounters and turn them into something that a wider audience could enjoy in Japan without having to immerse themselves in research and side reading. Something that people can pick up and play, but still create a sense of need and emotion.

On May 27th, 1986, the first DQ game was released to the world, and the JRPG template was born.

25 years ago, Roleplaying games were not seen in Japan. And when Dragon Quest did see the light of day, the creators questioned how well a sword and sorcery game would sell in a market that craved spaceships and science fiction. Now, the Japanese Role Playing Game is it's very own Genre that is popular all over the world, wildly so in Japan. And Sword and Sorcery is almost expected of it, to the point where it became an innovation to bring such a system into a modern or futuristic setting. These things that were unheard of then are taken for granted now.

25 years later, DQ is still going strong, and it has spawned numerous titles, imitators, and other games have expanded and worked on the system and structure that it has pioneered. The Dragon Quest system is sacred to many, as could be seen in the backlash that DQIX received when live-action fighting was proposed.
But DQ isn't just a system. It isn't just a JRPG pioneer or nostalgia bait. Dragon Quest is challenging and enthralling, yet simple and easy to learn and get into.

And I know I am not alone when I say that there is nothing quite like it, and it holds a special place in my heart. There are many more things I wanted to say here, but we can talk about them later.

Even if you don't consider yourself a superfan, take some time to appreciate what Dragon Quest has done for its medium, its fans, and culture as a whole, all in 25 years. Take a few seconds to think about how far we have come, and how Dragon Quest's core appeal has survived to this day.

Makes me wish I still got Nintendo Power. I was a subscriber for around 9 years, and I stopped getting them back in 2009. The magazine just lost a lot of it's luster to me, since it looked as if it was trying to "grow up" with it's readers, without understanding that a lot of people look to Nintendo for all-ages fun. They did have some great interviews, though. I quote that Final Fantasy IV DS interview all the time when discussing things.

I know that Horii wanted his heroes to be relatable, and I personally think no series does a silent hero quite like Dragon Quest.

As you might have noticed with my initial announcement here, it occurred to me while writing it that we really do take a lot of Dragon Quest staples for granted. It was the first time I read about how they were unsure how a sword and sorcery game would sell in Japan. There are tons of games before it that had been set in those times, but just hearing how they were unsure of how it would sell just sounds to surreal to me, knowing how popular sword and sorcery is all over the world now, especially in RPGs, western or otherwise.