I have something special planned for tonight's Nintendo History feature. And no, it's not for a Wii game!

is it the famicon game you were mentioning yesterday

Mario Kart 8 is the number 1 most anticipated game at gamestop!
http://www.gamestop.com/browse/games?nav=28-xu0,135-ffff2418

Not sure if I'll be getting MK8 at launch, but I'm glad to hear that the people who got it early are having fun!

Sex in Bayonetta 2 is only moderate?!

Will do! Just finished 50 cc!

Also people, Bandai Namco Studios Inc. is in Special Thanks in the staff credits! No other game studios were mentioned, not even Monolith who often gets thanked. Has Bandai Namco developed an even deeper relationship with Nintendo than just Smash Bros?!

Here is one gameplay video I uploaded to Youtube and Miiverse using the built-in sharing feature of MK8!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdBdUWlQ-Nc

Lucky green shell hit at 0:07, I just threw it mid-air and suddenly there was an opponent in front of it. The uploader is neat, with cool features and customization, but a little slow. Or maybe my internet connection was slow.

I think Namco are in charge of the arcade Mario Karts to a degree, so that might be the reason.

Ah, you're right, I forgot they were.

Today in Nintendo History:

Dragon Quest was released in Japan for the Famicom! (1986)

The past couple of days, I've been talking about games that were historically interesting, but hardly monumental. Dragon Quest is Monumental. THIS is where the JRPG, the Console RPG, the non-PC-Techie-Only RPG began. It's hard to overstate how important this release was to the history of video gaming in Japan.

But let's start at the beginning...

The RPG is an interesting gaming genre. Unlike strategy and action games, which have long had parallels in non-electronic games, the role-playing game as we know it only came into being about 40 years ago with the release of Dungeons and Dragons. That game, by scaling down what made war games popular in certain circles and adding a Fantasy setting, established a new genre, based around exploration, numbers, and tales.

D&D was the birthplace of many facetws of modern culture, but for now, wecusing on video games. And video games based on Dungeons and Dragons came surprisingly quickly. By the end of 1975, a number of simple proto-RPG's were in existence around the universities of America, sitting in College Computers. It wasn't until the 80's, however, that the advent of the personal computer made games based on D&D available to a wider audience. Said audience was fairly narrow: games were measured in how many thousands or tens of thousands of copies were sold. This was due not only to the scarcity of computers at the time, but also the audience: techies who loved number crunching party stats. You know Pokemon fanatics that did EV and IV training back before these values became more transparent? Imagine a target audience entirely consisting of that.

Games like the Ultima and Wizary series approached the RPG genre from different angles, but together, they created the building blocks of Dragon Quest. Things like overworlds, experience points and levels, equipment, and character classes were made in these early American RPG's. However, the audience remained small, and concentrated on the rare personal computer rather than consoles. Tus, the Atari 2600 never really did have a great epic RPG, and wouldn't have ven if it were more capable. It was up to a different nation to make the RPG a genre for the masses.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, in 1982, an unsuccessful real estate company decided to focus on video game development, renaming itself Enix. Problem was: they had no developers. A contest of game-making skill was held, and out of hundreds of contenders, two stood out: Yuji Horii and Koichi Nakamura. With these two talented young blokes recruited, Enix began developing games for computers and the Famicom in particular. Games like Door Door were hits in the early 80's. Nakamura, meanwhile, founded a developer known as Chunsoft, named after a character from Door Door, which worked to develop games for Enix. This relationship of a developer making games for a publisher was fairly new. Remember, even 3rd party games were a fairly novel concept during the recently ended Atari era. This was one of the early examples of a Publisher/Developer dynamic working well.

Meanwhile, Horii and Nakamura had been playing Western RPG games like Ultima and Wizadry. Inspired by these games, Japan's own gaming scene, and Manga (Horii worked for Shonen Jump), they decided to make their own kind of RPG, for the Famicom console rather than personal computers.

The two stars of Enix's development team were helped by two newcomers. One of them, Akira Toriyama, was a manga artist hired to make the artwork and character/enemy designs for the game. The basic designs of the 8 bit slimes and dragons were made into an anime style, rather than being ripped off from D&D manuals like many Western games. Ironically, Toriyama had been writing a Dragon-related manga for a year when he was hired. Something about seven magical balls and martial arts.

The last big member of Enix's RPG team was the composer Koihi Sugiyama, a veteran of writing scores for television. He actually was the one to contact Enix. After a period of shock that a famous composer was working with them, Enix welcomed him with warm arms. His score of eight distinct songs defined the soundtrack of the entire rsulting franchise. Music would consist of bombastic trumpets with the ocassional whistle and jingle.

The result was Dragon Quest.

So, what made Dragon Quest stand out and found a genre? Well...

• The Japanese trend of building an RPG around a central plot was established. Western RPG's often either had no plots or focused more on smaller stories within a larger world. The scale of Dragon Quest, both in terms of gameplay and story, was something new.
• The game's art style and pretty colors made it much more approachable than the American RPG's of old. Toriyama's illustrations in particular gave the game a very familiar feel, despite the strangeness of the genre at the time.
• Character stats and attributes were simplified so as to be streamlined. You had one character that leveled up at one rate and gained eight spells at certain levels. Short, sweet, and to the point. Stats were still important and visible, but never cluttered things up.
• Dragon Quest's world was very open, even more so than most latter entries in the series. Although wandering too far away from the starting area would lead to a speedy demise, exploration and freedom were a major component of the game.
• The game's world included a total of 5 towns and 5 dungeons; not much, but it gave a lot of destinations to visit.
• Random encounters already had appeared in RPG's. but this is when they became the norm.
• The goal was always obvious. Well, by RPG standards. The king tells you that trouble is afoot, and as soon as you go into the overworld, you can see the ultimate destination of your journey.
• Most of the 8 spells could be used out of combat, with the main exceptions being a couple of offensive spells.
• Multiple Endings. There were four of them, one of which was the "Bad" ending.

With Dragon Quest ready to take on the world, it was released on May 27, 1986.

To poor sales.

Fortunately, that connection to Shonen Jump saved the day. That magazine had over four million readers in 1986, a huge portion of the target audience. Shonen Jump extensively covered Dragon Quest, providing guides to the game and the RPG genre basics. With this bit of help, Dragon Quest eventually got over a million sales, and was guaranteed a sequel or ten. However, it's worth noting that until Dragon Quest 10, the original was the worst-selling entry in the series.

Later, in 1989, Enix decided to try to replicate the game's success in America. Since Enix lacked any American branch, Nintendo themselves localized the game, and had it ready by August. The American version, named Dragon Warrior to avoid a copyright problem with another RPG series, was actually an improvement in many respects. It had a proper battery save system rather than the lengthy password of the Famicom version. The game's graphics were generally improved, though made a bit more "Western" in the process, and the names of spells made their uses clear. Plus, you had an olde English translation that endeared the game to many.

However, like in Japan, the game had trouble taking off. Eventually, Nintendo bundled the game with subscriptions of Nintendo Power in order to get rid of excess stock. Since Nintendo Power was essentially an advertisment for Nintendo products, this kind of made Dragon Warrior sucessful for Nintendo of America. However, unlike in Japan, the latter NES games were sales disappointments, leading to many Dragon Quest games not being released West for years to come.

Part of the reason Dragon Quest was overshadowed was that another RPG was stealing the glory. And incidentally, it was also Japanese.

Final Fantasy was essentially the next step up for the genre. I could make a whole feature about how FF1>DQ1, but suffice to say, by the time latter Dragon Quests came West, Final Fantasy had stolen the gamers' hearts.

Since its initial release in 1986, Dragon Quest has seen a number of re-releases. These include a 1992 version for the Super Famicom, a 1998 Sattelaview version, a 1999 Game Boy Color version, an appearence in the 2011 compilation for the Wii, and multiple mobile appearences.

So, why exactly was all this a big deal?

It codified the laws of the JRPG. Elements from Western games like Levels and items were kept, but new or otherwise non-ubiquitous elements such as the top-down view, division of the game into battles, places, and the overworld, and the manga-inspirred artwork became the norm for the genre. Even competing series seen as very different, Final Fantasy, draw from the same well of ideas.

So, happy 28th birthday to the JRPG.

Epilogue

• Chunsoft went on to make the first five Dragon Quest games, and remained an independent company through 2012. Even today though, after its merger with Spike, the spirit lives on. Their post-Dragon-Quest-main-series games have included hits like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Shiren the Wanderer, Adventure games like 999 and Zero Escape, and even other Dragon Quest games.
• Enix became one of Japan's two big JRPG powerhouses. In 2003, it merged with Square, oming the undisputed lord of all JRPG's other than Pokemon.
• Akira Toriyama, along with his silly "Dragon Ball" series, continues to work on Dragon Quest games to this day, along with Sogiyama and Horii. The only one of the four key developers not involved in the series nowadays is Nakamura, who still works at Chunsoft.
• Dragon Quest is arguably the most popular series in Japanese gaming history.

Don't expect something this size tomorrow!