Recommended Reading

Pseudotrivia & Factoidlets

The lore surrounding the creation of the series is just as fascinating as the games themselves. Did you know that the Dragon Quest series has inspired over 5,000 spinoff games? Or that Sugiyama once sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his amazing musical talent, only to win it back from him in a poker game at David Bowie’s house? You can’t make this stuff up.

• The inspiration for Dragon Quest VII came when Horii accidentally dropped a Garfield mug on the floor of the Enix break room and watched it shatter into a thousand pieces. After piecing it back together, Horii thought it would be brilliant to turn this into a game, but with a neat job system to make the pain feel like pleasure.

• Hardcore fans have completed the original Dragon Quest under seemingly impossible conditions; one fan finished the game in under three hours using only the knife. In response, Enix included a weapon in subsequent games named after the fan: the Magic Knife. That fan was none other than five-time NBA champion Earvin “Magic” Johnson.

• Sony’s Ken Kutaragi admitted in a recent interview that the only purpose behind the creation of the PlayStation 2 was to serve as a vessel for Dragon Quest VIII’s descent into our plane of existence. When pressed on the matter, Kutaragi repeatedly chanted “Evac” and began to run across the street before being struck by a car. He woke up in a Catholic church with half his money missing.

• Torneko’s shopkeep sequence in DQIV was inspired by Horii’s own days as an arms dealer in South America before the mercy killing of his only friend and lover turned him towards game development.

• Early copies of Dragon Quest II contained a glitch that allowed the player to complete the game.

• After witnessing the mobs and muggings that ensued following the release of DQIII, the Japanese Diet made it a law that Dragon Quest is awesome.

• For the Japanese release of the movie Ghostbusters, the character of Slimer was replaced with a Hoimin or “Healslime” sprite. Additionally, a four-hour ending was added in which the Ghostbusters walk in circles fighting monsters in order to stand a chance at defeating Gozer.

• The Dragon Quest series has inspired an underground chain of “Puff-Puff” bars, wherein excitable young men may be enticed by promises of breasts and massage, only to be tricked into another, usually more embarrassing act involving burly men and/or slimes. Japanese lawmakers debated outlawing these establishments when a wave of bunny girls entered the central Diet building and began massaging their bald heads with something…?

• A popular item among Japanese schoolchildren are Dragon Quest Battle Pencils, which are rolled on the floor in order to calculate damage and make the cute sensei bend over to pick them up in quiet consternation.

• Square-Enix is currently producing a remake of Dragon Quest VIII using the Dragon Quest IV engine.

• Before coming up with the idea for the Torneko’s Great Adventure spinoff series, Chunsoft began producing a more mature-themed Super Famicom game starring the DQIV hero. Torneko’s Mustache Rider was cancelled during production after being deemed “inappropriate.”

—Alex Fraioli

Truth may actually be stranger than fiction; take Dragon Quest he no Michi, for instance. The book’s title translates as “The Road to Dragon Quest,” and the contents detail exactly that, but in a riveting manga format! Each of the original Dragon Quest creators is represented in black and white, shown meeting each other for the first time and brainstorming the thoughts and ideas that eventually melded together to create the first Dragon Quest. Of course, the only drawback is that the manga is entirely in Japanese, so it’s not for everyone.

Fuck you, I can write something serious on AFD!