Dragon Warrior (1986) (VG)

Director:

Koichi Nakamura

Writer:

Yuji Horii (scenario)

Release Date:

27 May 1986 (Japan)

Genre:

Adventure | Fantasy

Plot:

A hero descended of another great hero named Lotto steps up to the plate to battle a tyrant (name of villain varies with version: Sometimes DragonLord or Dracolord) that has kidnapped a princess and threatens world domination. |

Also Known As:

Dragon Quest (Japan: English title)

Country:

Japan

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Company:

Armor Project

Trivia:

As the first game in the series, there is no party system. Fights are always one-on-one, your lone hero character versus a single enemy.

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in Yûsha no kuse ni namaikida (2007) (VG)

addicting strategy game.

This was a fantastic game. One of my favorite games ever. The land of Alefgard is being tormented by the evil Dragonlord and his many minions. Being the descendant of the great warrior Erdrick, you must scavenger the countryside, killing the Dragonlords minions, gaining experience points, collecting magical items, find the kidnapped Princess Gwaelin, and eventually defeat the Dragonlord. With each defeated foe, you gain power, and learn new spells. You also get gold, which can be saved up to purchase weapons and armor.

There were a few annoying things about this game too. One was the bumping sounds it made whenever you ran into a wall, so whenever you're walking through a cave you just hear bump bump bump all the time. There's also the somewhat irritating battles, where you try to cast the sleep spell, it doesn't work, but then your foe casts the sleep spell on you, and it does work. You then would sometimes get beaten to death without being able to fight back.

One thing I noticed is missing from the IMDb page, is the fact that Akira Toriyama (Dragonball creator), did the character design for the game. The characters are really quite fantastical, druins, wyverns, dragons, slimes, wizards, wraiths, wolfs, goldmen, and many others. It doesn't take any fancy hand movements to play this, as it does in many other games. This is a mostly strategy game, in which you just choose your characters actions, but don't actually have to move your character around during battle like you do in Zelda. It's kind of like the setup in Knights of the Old Republic, but with less control, I think.

This spawned a whole series of games. In the second game, there were some improvements, but also the music wasn't as good, and the characters weren't as fantastic. I downloaded a rom of this game recently, and I've had great fun replaying it. By the way, the silver harp can be found in the cave in Garinham, which is through a secret passage at the left top corner of the locked building. Be sure to download cave maps, as it can be quite frustrating without them.