Players who are familiar with playing Japanese games may have heard an exaggerated story: "Whenever a new game of Dragon Quest (DQ for short) is released, there are countless underage students skipping class and adults taking leave of absence, in order to be able to buy and play the latest Dragon Quest works for the first time." Because of the popularity of Dragon Quest works, these social phenomena have led to the enactment of a law in Japan that Dragon Quest works can only be sold on non-working days. ”
This exaggerated story in the Japanese game industry, which caused a large number of students to skip classes to buy games, is true, but the Japanese government has promulgated a new legal provision of course, of course, it is false, and it is precisely because of such a pompous story that it is used to illustrate the influence of the Dragon Quest series in the Japanese player community.
The wrapping cover of the cassette of the first generation of Dragon Quest game
The birth of Japan's national RPG
Only from the perspective of the game's influence on Japan, it can be called a Japanese national game, and it is only the Dragon Quest series. The entire Dragon Quest series, the first work since 1986, spanning more than 30 years of time, more than a dozen works of all sizes, the overall sales have reached an impressive result of 80 million copies at the beginning of this year. As an enduring IP, it has a high popularity in the world, and the popularity of the Japanese mainland region and the title of "National RPG" game fully illustrate the love of Japanese players for its series.
In Japan in the 1980s, the penetration rate of personal computer products in the whole of Japan was about 10% of the penetration rate of hundreds of thousands of units, a computer game at that time if it could sell 30,000 copies, it was a sensational big news, but Nintendo's home game console FC, in Japan has about 3.5 million units of popularity, released on the FC platform "Dragon Quest 1" with the FC home console east wind, in Japan won a staggering 1.5 million copies of the game sales, Remember that this maddening digital record was set in the 80s. It was also because of the popularity of sales at that time that there was an exaggerated story introduced at the beginning of this article.
Speaking of the birth of Dragon Quest, it is necessary to mention Yuji Horii, the father of DQ, in 1982, ENIX (Enix) Game Production Company held a competition for video game programs, most of the participants in this project were the developers of the first work of Dragon Quest, and Yuji Horii also successfully won the competition. When Yuji Horii developed Dragon Quest 1 with the production team, two European and American RPG games had a profound impact on him, one called "Witchcraft" and the other called "Genesis". Yuji Horii perfectly blended the character's ability values in Witchcraft with the two settings of the full-screen map in Genesis, and the basic gameplay of the game was formed.
Numerical systems become standard in the DQ series
There are many factors that Horii Yuji chose FC as a platform that year, in addition to the amount of FC in the Japanese family that year, another factor is that he hopes that players can have a save function, but the FC of that year only has 64KB ROM for developers to use, in the face of the technical bottleneck of the storage medium, the game developers of that year also used a variety of tricks to solve this problem, the early FC game screen, most of which are stacked in a symmetrical form, so that only a small amount of pictures are stored. It is possible to stack various images, which is why the FC game characters or maps at that time were symmetrical structures.
Yuji Horii's Manuscript
In addition to the images, the sound files take up more storage space, and Yuji Horii directly appears all of the characters' dialogue in text form, which is also the origin of the "dumb protagonist" of the Dragon Quest series.
Although the purpose of this set of "dumb protagonists" is to save storage space, it is also indirectly crooked, increasing the "sense of substitution" of the game. There are many players who are obsessed with the Dragon Quest series, and they will mention that this series of games has a strong sense of substitution. Because the game character does not speak, just to remove the difference between the character and the player, the tone of the character's speech, tone, inner thoughts, etc. all rely on the player's own brain, perfectly in line with the strange ideas in the hearts of each different player, the so-called "what can not be obtained is the best, what can not be seen is the most beautiful."
How glorious are the workers? DQ has worked hand in hand with Akira Toriyama for 30 years
After getting the basic gameplay, the rest is the character art setting, at that time, when the manga master Akira Toriyama's "Dragon Ball" was infinitely beautiful in the Japanese manga industry, Horii Yuji went to invite Akira Toriyama to take on the role and monster image design of "Dragon Quest 1" with the mentality of trying it out, and through the interview memories of Akira Toriyama decades later, we have to know that at that time, Akira Toriyama did not think much about it, and thought that it was a good thing to have a job to come to the door, so he casually promised it, and now we all know the result This time, the strong cooperation lasted for more than 30 years.
Akira Toriyama in his youth
When Akira Toriyama took over the design work of the Dragon Quest characters and monsters, he also continued to work on the "Dragon Ball" manga series of the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump, but in order to smoothly advance the game development process, Akira Toriyama still squeezed out time to complete the design work of the Dragon Quest, and the big guys from all walks of life around the world have proved the eternal truth for us with practical actions: "Time crowding will always happen." ”
Japanese media outlet NHK produced a Dragon Quest documentary in which Akira Toriyama encountered some interesting things as the main character. The art style of the Dragon Quest series has never changed, and Yuji Horii has also tried to communicate with Akira Toriyama to change some of these art settings, hoping to add a hood to the protagonist.
However, he was then rejected by a very euphemistic email from Akira Toriyama, who said in the email at the time: "Although the modification does not take much time, if you add the hood, the position of the sword will move to the waist, and the knot on the belt will not exist, which will look a little less like a brave, do you think there is no problem?" Personally, I think the current image is more handsome. ”
Akira Toriyama's reply at the time
Looking back at this matter from the perspective of both sides of our modern needs, a simple translation, Party B's big guy Toriyama Akira domineeringly said to Party A's father: "I think it's very good, don't change!" "This may come from the big guy's insistence on the work."
From the first work of Dragon Quest to the current "Dragon Quest 11" after dozens of works, character design work is 30 years (to 2020 has been 34 years), Akira Toriyama for the game works to draw more than 500 kinds of characters and monster images, behind the players can see these more than 500 kinds of character images, is a large number of works that were finally abandoned. The NHK documentary production team also asked Akira Toriyama what made him stay in this job for more than 30 years.
Akira Toriyama replied, "I didn't think too much about it at the beginning, I took over the job very casually, and there was no concept of RPG games in that era, and to be honest, if I had known before that this job would last so long, I would have refused." The character design of The Dragon Quest is a happy and hard work, although it is said that it is a fantasy theme, but it can not be completely out of the era of setting to play at will, the requirements of the demand side are very detailed, the design freedom is very low, occasionally want to engage in tricks, it is likely that the final work will be shot, so I miss those free play design strange time, but accept a job will not give up halfway, I am working very hard in the design, please wait and see. ”
Original paintings of monsters such as the Dragon King
In the process of the evolution of the DQ series, the DQ production team in recent years wants to get rid of Akira Toriyama's art style, which means that the production team wants to change the consistent art style of the DQ series and try to be more in line with the aesthetic design of the game. In the 2019 Dragon Quest 3D animated film, the producer abandoned DQ's consistent style of Akira Toriyama, giving the reason because the cute monsters under Akira Toriyama's painting style did not match the thick story.
Although the response of the movie in Japan is good, but for overseas fans of the old game, this trick is a bad move, many overseas players are dissatisfied with the new style of the persona, the change of the style of the person directly leads to the taste of the year, can not hook their memories of playing DQ works in the past.
Memories of youth, pure JRPG
DQ series of works, can be so many years have been enduring, generations of fans are very buy-in, there is an important reason is that the entire series style has maintained consistency, in this era of mobile game works are popular, Square Enix has also issued 3 mobile games based on the DQ series, of which "ドラゴンクエストモンスターズ スーパーライト (Brave Dragon Monster Wonderland Super light) is an RPG mobile game launched in 2014. The game's art style still maintains the style of Akira Toriyama's DQ series, and there is no drastic change in the art style. This game has been in continuous operation since its launch in 2014, and it is a very rare masterpiece in the mobile game industry, and the general mobile game works do not have such a long life cycle, indicating that Japanese players still like the traditional works of the DQ series.
DQ series mobile game "Dragon Quest Monster Wonderland Super light"
On the host platform, the latest "Dragon Quest 11" or Akira Toriyama as the main character design, with the progress of the era of picture technology, the previous pixel pictures of the combination of monsters, the need for players to combine with Akira Toriyama's original painting for brain supplement image, now these classic monsters and characters have a very good picture performance, Toriyama style characters in the modern 3D picture technology under the image is more plump, the taste is still that cartoon style taste.
Dragon Quest 11 character screen
summary
The DQ series is obviously not a work suitable for all players to love, but this longevity series still maintains its insistence on the traditional style, and many series works have also been carefully polished for some design shortcomings, leaving the most essential part of the series of works, which is the insistence of a development team on pure JRPG games, and I believe that players who really love JRPG games will not be disappointed in the DQ series.