Dragon Warrior — stories left

To find talent for the company, Fukushima held the "Enix Game Hobby Program Contest".

This time, Nakamura won with his "cartoonish and creative contest entry" Door Door, which became Enix's first release for the NES.

He was already a well-known composer of television shows and pop songs, and, upon seeing his feedback, Enix producer Yukinobu Chida contacted him to confirm that "he was the Sugiyama from television".

He said it took him five minutes to compose the original opening theme, and noted the difficulty in adding a personal touch to the short jingles, but that his past experience with creating music for television commercials helped.

In June 1989, Electronic Gaming Monthlys "Quartermann" speculated that Dragon Warrior would be Nintendo's "big release" in North America that Christmas based on the immense popularity of the series in Japan, especially Dragon Quest III.

The soundtrack included eight tracks, which RPGFan said was "the foundation for Sugiyama's career".

The soundtrack's "eight melodies" approach set the template for most RPG soundtracks released since then, hundreds of which have been organized in a similar manner.

People liked Toriyama's artwork and Sugiyama's music, which the book Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life said "was richer and more exciting than any game music had ever sounded".

The 1989 "All Soft Catalog" issue of Famicom Tsūshin (Famitsu) includes Dragon Quest in its list of the best games of all time, receiving the Best RPG and Best Character Design awards, but losing to Dragon Quest III for the overall Grand Prize for best game of all time.

According to Chris Kohler, Nintendo profited immensely from the giveaway because "Nintendo Power was essentially a hundred-page monthly ad for Nintendo products", and it was now in thousands of households.

In the "Nintendo Power Awards 1989", the game was nominated for "Best Theme, Fun" and "Best Overall"; but did not win in either category.

In response to Japanese youths' arrests while waiting for Dragon Quest IIIs release, Electronic Gaming Monthlys Quartermann said that the game was not "that special at all", compared it to the NES version of Ultima III: Exodus and recommended that others play that game instead.

Nintendo Power said the game's historical significance is its greatest aspect, and noted that "playing Dragon Warrior these days can be a bit of a chore".

He criticized its repetitiveness, but said that it is short enough that most players should finish the game before repetition becomes an issue.

Gamasutras Kurt Kalata also praised the symphonies' melody, commenting that "the overworld theme... is pretty simplistic and grating, but actually sounds pretty beautiful when played by a live orchestra".

Reviewers said that, though Final Fantasy has been considered more important due to its popularity and attention in North America, Dragon Warrior laid the fundamentals on which Final Fantasy was based.

In the Nintendo Powers November 2010 issue, in celebration of the NES's 25th anniversary in North America, Horii recalled the making of Dragon Warrior.

Horii was a fan of basic RPG mechanics, and wanted to simplify the interfaces; he said that many other RPGs' interfaces at the time "were so complicated that they intimidated new users".

He said that Dragon Quests simplified gameplay made the game appealing to people and made the franchise successful.

Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line and Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation, released later, are closely connected to this game, and the 3 titles together are called the "Loto series".

In 1993, 7 years after the Famicom version was released, it was released together with Dragon Quest II as a package of 1 games titled Dragon Quest I & II, and the name "Dragon Quest I", which had been used for convenience, came to be used officially.

On 2025-10-30, nearly 1 years after that release date, and on 10-31 of the same year for Steam, it was released together with Dragon Quest II as a package of 1 games titled Dragon Quest I & II for Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, XBOX SIRIES X|S, and Windows.

In the "Game Report Card" reader poll run by the magazine Family Computer Magazine,it scored 25.02 out of 30, as listed separately.

The same magazine's special supplement "Famicom ROM Cartridge All Catalog" (1991-5-10 issue) placed it as "the 1 title that made RPGs mainstream". It pointed to how well known the game was, saying "Dragon Quest - the only people who have never heard the name are probably the elderly", and also noted that it had been treated as a social phenomenon and had set off a huge boom.

More than 1.2 million copies were sold in Japan.

In Japan, 1.5 million copies of the original version were sold.

The game sold about 500,000 copies in the United States, making it the third best-selling 1989 game release in North America, below Nintendo's Tetris and Super Mario Land.

In total, Dragon Quest sold more than 2 million copies worldwide.

The Dragon Quest I & II remake for the Super Famicom yielded 1.2 million copies sold in Japan.

GameSpot gave it a 9.6 out of 10, citing the great improvements to sound quality and the appeal of playing both games in succession, and GameRankings reports an 82% overall score.

Combined, both the SNES and GBC remakes had more than 1.94 million copies sold worldwide.

For the week of August 26 to September 1, 2008, volume 7 was ranked 9th in Japan, with 59,540 copies sold.

For the week of February 24 to March 2, 2009, volume 8 was ranked 19th in Japan, at 76,801 copies.

For the week of October 26 to November 1, 2009, volume 9 was ranked 16th in Japan, at 40,492 copies for a total of 60,467.

Horii designed a tennis game, Love Match Tennis, which became Enix's first release.

This time, Nakamura won with his "cartoonish and creative contest entry" Door Door, which became Enix's first release for the NES.

The port is Enix's second release for the system and the first game which Horii and Nakamura worked on together.

Coverage of Dragon Quests North American localization first appeared in Nintendo Fun Club News Winter 1987 issue.

Square Enix started publishing a sequel series, , in 2005. wrote the first four volumes, and Takashi Umemura wrote the last five; Yuji Horii supervised the manga, and Kamui Fujiwara contributed the artwork.

The first is as a Drama CD, released by Enix on July 19, 1991, which incorporated a narrated story.

More than of those copies were sold within the first six months.

In the first Famitsu Best Hit Game Awards (published February 1987, for 1986 releases), Dragon Quest won the awards for Game of the Year, Best Scenario/Story, Best Character Design, Best Programmer (for Koichi Nakamura), and Best RPG.

Several years after the Japanese release, the first English version of Dragon Warrior was initially seen as a commercial failure, but the Nintendo Power subscription giveaway was eventually a success and allowed Enix to bring the next three games to North America.

In 2016, the spinoff Dragon Quest Builders was released as an alternate sequel to the first game.

Enix released the role-playing game Dragon Quest in 1986/5 (1986/5), which grew popular as the Dragon Quest series.

In 12, Square — inspired by Dragon Quest — released Final Fantasy, which likewise grew popular as the Final Fantasy series.

The game sold about 500,000 copies in the United States, making it the third best-selling 1989 game release in North America, below Nintendo's Tetris and Super Mario Land.

They praised the medal collection as a nice way to compete with friends.

Comparing it to its NES counterpart, RPGamers Derek Cavin awarded it 3 out of 5, saying that the game is above average in all aspects, and particularly praised the visual elements.

He criticized its repetitiveness, but said that it is short enough that most players should finish the game before repetition becomes an issue.

He praised efforts by Koichi Sugiyama and the orchestras to compose an above-average piece beyond the flatness of the source material.

Gamasutras Kurt Kalata also praised the symphonies' melody, commenting that "the overworld theme... is pretty simplistic and grating, but actually sounds pretty beautiful when played by a live orchestra".

Coverage of Dragon Quests North American localization first appeared in Nintendo Fun Club News Winter 1987 issue.

The game was later mentioned in Nintendo Power "Pak Watch" preview section in March 1989, mentioning Dragon Quest IIIs Japanese release in the magazine's premiere July 1988 issue.

Nintendo Power provided three feature articles on Dragon Warrior for issues between May and October 1989 and the November–December 1989 issue includes a strategy guide.

The March–April 1990 issue of Nintendo Power has a map of the game world, with a poster of Super Contra on the other side, and a Dragon Warrior text adventure.

The 1989 "All Soft Catalog" issue of Famicom Tsūshin (Famitsu) includes Dragon Quest in its list of the best games of all time, receiving the Best RPG and Best Character Design awards, but losing to Dragon Quest III for the overall Grand Prize for best game of all time.

He criticized its repetitiveness, but said that it is short enough that most players should finish the game before repetition becomes an issue.

In the Nintendo Powers November 2010 issue, in celebration of the NES's 25th anniversary in North America, Horii recalled the making of Dragon Warrior.

The experience needed to go from level 1 to level 2 was set at "20" early in development, but it was lowered to "7" so that players would feel the exhilaration of levelling up (as the source for this subsection).

At first the controls had problems by the standards of the 2010s, such as movement in half-tile units, but an update on 2014-2-15 improved this, changing movement to units of 1 tile.

It was originally released in Japan in May 1986 and by Nintendo in North America in August 1989.

Portopia was originally released for Japan's NEC PC-6001 and was later ported to the Famicom in 1985.

Nintendo also removed salacious humor and religious connotations from the English-language version.

titled Dragon Warrior when initially localized to North America, is a 1986 role-playing video game developed by Chunsoft and published by Enix for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Coverage of Dragon Quests North American localization first appeared in Nintendo Fun Club News Winter 1987 issue.

With the remakes' good sales performances, Enix released Dragon Warrior III for the GBC in 2001, which was based on a previously unreleased SNES update of Dragon Quest IIIs English version.

In the Nintendo Powers November 2010 issue, in celebration of the NES's 25th anniversary in North America, Horii recalled the making of Dragon Warrior.

He said it took him five minutes to compose the original opening theme, and noted the difficulty in adding a personal touch to the short jingles, but that his past experience with creating music for television commercials helped.