Videogame development throughout the 80's by Splash Wave

[tepples]

Likewise, games for the original Xbox would have started on an equivalent PC running Windows. But how would Lynx, Jaguar, 3DO, and PlayStation games have started? 3DO and PS1 had no predecessor from the same company, and the Lynx and Jaguar didn't meaningfully resemble their predecessor Atari 7800. Super Disc doesn't count for PS1 because 1. it was never released and 2. Bernie Stolar of SCEA opposed the sort of 2D games that would have been ported from Super NES.

[Oziphantom]

they don't have to be the previous machine of the company. Just the previous gen.
So for Xbox they could have used a PC with specs or a dreamcast or a PS1 whatever you had lying around.
Lynx you would just use an Amiga or basically any other 2D thing you have.
Jaguar, 3D0 you would have started on whatever 2D console you had or Amiga or DOS PC.
PS1 again you started on SNES, PC.

Lets take Jaguar launch games for example
Cybermorph - you could just as easily work out the base game for this on an Amiga or DOS. Just drop the polycount half the colour etc, doesn't matter you are just working out your controls, level placement. Then when you get the Kits you put it on and upgrade as it can allow.
Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy - yeah Amiga or DOS and then you just made better resolution final art, you could have started dev on a Commodore 64 and made all the enemies solid blocks for all that it mattered to gameplay.
Raiden - you have the arcade machine already, just wait till you get hardware and do a quick port.
Dino Dudes - Atari ST would hadle that game, then throw in a fancy backdrop image and ship it.

or PS1
Air Combat - Namco ported from their 3D arcade hardware System 21 from 1988.
Battle Arena Toshinden - you could do with sprites and something with scaling and then add 3D models to it near the end.
ESPN Extreme Sports - you could prototype this game in a Turbo outrun engine on a Commodore 64 and still get your level layouts sorted. Top Gear engine on a SNES would be a step up.
Kileak: The DNA Imperative - Doom mood to start with
NBA Jam Tournament Edition - arcade port
Rayman - literally had a SNES version in the works
Ridge Racer - Namco ported from their 3D arcade hardware
Soul Caliber - Namco ported from their 3D arcade hardware
Street Fighter: The Movie - Capcom ported from the 2D arcade hardware
The Raiden Project - quick ports of the arcade games
Total Eclipse Turbo - the PS1 would have been ported from the 3D0 version.

[Pokun]

Namco's 3D arcade hardware (dating back all the way to Namco and Atari's Hard Drivin' in 1988) is quite literally the predecessor to the PS1's 3D hardware.

[Oziphantom]

and if you were looking to do an early 3D game for the consoles, but didn't have anything to run the graphics you used paper to sell the concept to get hardware https://youtu.be/C_1EyYC0h_U?t=544

[Oziphantom]

this video about FF1 shows the hand drawn town layouts they used for FF1 dev from the book https://youtu.be/ZG6qpvGyCWU?t=602

[SNESPlayer]

Thanks for the video!

I do wonder what people saw fun with Dragon Quest though (since it's mentioned in the video), it's still a consistent seller in Japan so there has to be something I guess. The first game is fine but both the battle system (more specifically, the amount of grinding from the first Famicom and NES version, the GBC one thankfully made things better) and the 'but thou must' dialogue options presented in those games doesn't give me a 'Wow, must play!' vibe. My understanding of the matter is that Dragon Quest was a hit because Japanese audiences endeared to a game that was much simpler to play than contemporary games from PC platforms while also being much more straightforward to get into.

Maybe is just me though.

[segaloco]

Thanks for the video!

I do wonder what people saw fun with Dragon Quest though (since it's mentioned in the video), it's still a consistent seller in Japan so there has to be something I guess. The first game is fine but both the battle system (more specifically, the amount of grinding from the first Famicom and NES version, the GBC one thankfully made things better) and the 'but thou must' dialogue options presented in those games doesn't give me a 'Wow, must play!' vibe. My understanding of the matter is that Dragon Quest was a hit because Japanese audiences endeared to a game that was much simpler to play than contemporary games from PC platforms while also being much more straightforward to get into.

Maybe is just me though.

The script was a very weak point in the localized version. The original script does not read like period speech, for the most part AFAIK. And yes, the reduction in complexity had a lot to do with it. Your other options at the time were things like Wizardry and Ultima, computer titles with a lot more stuff going on. Compared with DQII, the first title is much more balanced, it's pretty small by comparison. It was one of the first JRPGs I played after a like 5-6 year hiatus from pretty much all things video games in the mid 2010s and I think having relatively few opinions on games at the time helped me enjoy it more, as opposed to trying to pick it up as someone following the current generations of games. Heck, I've even considered playing through it again, but that won't be until I finish merging the US release into my disasm and can then make myself a proper delocalized port.

Also consider the fact that compared with other RPGs of the time, this was a very Japanese game, it ran exclusively on Japanese hardware, was built by Japanese folks, etc. so there was a point of pride in a home grown game when most of what they had to play resembling an RPG came from dirty westerners. Of course not saying that's a great perspective, but there is certainly an element of Japanese pride involved in the staying power of Dragon Quest.

[Gilbert]

DQ1 was made intentionally simple to introduce the core users of the console (i.e. mostly kids) to the genre, who otherwise might be scared away by complex and text heavy games. They then progressively added back features common to the genre (e.g. player party in DQ2 and player classes in DQ3) so gamers would learn and become familiar to such games step-by-step and by the fourth game, we have the best game ever (of all genre, of all time) that no other games can match.

Also, to stuff that much content into such small cart space was a great achievement by itself.
It's an important game in history that sucessfully fire up the genre for consoles.

The situation with the western versions was a bit sad. DW1 was released too late to the market (AFAIK, the same year as FF1), which by that time, was considered too simple and was often compared to FF1, not to mention that all the SFC entries were skipped for international release.

[Pokun]

Horii wanted to make DQ1 more like Ultima or Wizardry with multi-character parties and stuff, but the whole project was kinda experimental so he had to hold back a lot of things to see if they could make it at all, and that was maybe for the best for the Famicom audience's expectations as Gillbert talked about.
So Horii focused on building a fantastic world instead, that's what I think is so fun with DQ. The characters and their dialog, the towns and the caves. They all tell a story and the game opens the world to you but yet manages to force you to visit them in a certain order.

I think Toriyama also influenced the game, in more ways than being the illustrator. There are many similarities between Dragon Quest and his manga Dragon Ball, they both give a similar feeling (and things like the puff-puff gag being featured in both). I believe both DQ and DB has something that "talks" to many people and therefore both managed to become huge mainstream successes.

Why DQ wasn't more popular outside Japan is a puzzle to me, considering how popular DB was all over the world, but there seems there were many small factors that contributed little by little. If video games had been more popular in Europe outside Scandinavia, I'd bet DQ would've been a huge hit among French and Spanish population for example since DB was such a huge hit there (for reasons I mentioned above about the similarities). But NES wasn't in every other household in those countries and the RPG genre were too new and different for any publisher to gamble a localization on it (especially since you have to translate to French and Spanish etc).
Scandinavia (which had to be fine with English in 99% of the games) was just a too small a market to even be considered.

DQ was popular in USA however, although it wasn't the same huge success as in Japan. The RPG genre wasn't a mystery for Americans, they invented it after all, and they already had many games in it, so it wasn't really a gamble to release another RPG there. Unlike the FF games, the DQ games kept getting English localizations for every game in the series until Enix' American side had to close down for other reasons, leaving half-finished DQ5 in localization limbo (which was a real shame because it's my favorite DQ).
I guess the heavily localized script, the lack of Toriyama's illustrations and the late release were all contributing factors for it not becoming the same blockbuster hit it became in Japan.

After DQ5 being canceled the DQ series was almost forgotten in the west. But thanks to the hugely anticipated FF7 (which was the first FF main series game to be released in PAL regions) taking the world by storm, the RPG genre was finally accepted in Europe as well and received many new fans discovering the genre.
DQ finally got its first European release of the main series with DQ8 for PS2 (I think it was just named Dragon Quest though unlike with FF7 which actually retained the number), but that game was so heavily and strangely localized that it was received as a very quirky although fun RPG, and every DQ game after that still got that weird localization (with spells renamed into really weird stuff like "kafrizzle" and "kerplunk").
They never seem to learn not to touch the original too much.

[Bregalad]

DQ finally got its first European release of the main series with DQ8 for PS2 (I think it was just named Dragon Quest though unlike with FF7 which actually retained the number)

I just looked it up, it is officially titled "Dragon Quest -The Odyssey of the Cursed King"

Why DQ wasn't more popular outside Japan is a puzzle to me, considering how popular DB was all over the world, but there seems there were many small factors that contributed little by little.

I can't say for other gamers, but what always made me like the DQ much less than FF games is that that battles are much less interesting. Magic is very inneficient in DQ and used for healing mostly. In FF you actually are encouraged to play with the element system and use magic to get through. In DQ any attempt to use offensive magic will get you punished by an empty MP gauge and less damage done than physical attacks. On NES games the completely black background without any extra effort, obligatory heavy grinding, "innefective" attacks and high encounter rates makes this even worse - fortunately the various remakes fixed this.

[Pokun]

Yeah the more complex magic and elemental systems of the FF series was definitely one of those things the FF team thought was missing from the genre and successfully introduced to it.
Especially in DQ1 magic is mostly for healing and lighting up caves as the hero is a jack-of-all-trades with few useful spells, but this is also one of the things that makes DQ1 simple and more of an introductory RPG.
But already in DQ2 they introduced two types of spellcasters, a prince that is poor at fighting but can use some magic and a princess that is even weaker but excels in magic. Offensive magic is still a trump card and MP must be saved for tougher fights and for healing, this isn't really different from the earlier FF games (except FF2 where MP cost is incredibly low).
DQ3 introduces conventional classes, character creation and uses more elemental magic like in the FF series, but it's still quite subtle and the system where undead takes damage from healing isn't present (except for the final boss).


That about heavy grinding and ineffective attacks is a problem of the early FF games (especially FF1 and FF2) though and not much of a thing in the DQ games. DQ2 and later uses monster groups which makes attacks towards a defeated enemy redirected to remaining enemies in the group (if any), remakes also makes the AI decisions in such situations much smarter.
DQ1 actually has a full background when in the overworld, but it's always the same regardless of the terrain the encounter happened at.
DQ2 introduced lots of enemies, so I guess it has the same problem as FF1 had with the sprites-per-scanline-limit forcing enemies to be drawn as BG characters, which made it harder to have a detailed background layer.

My friends that played through the Pixels Remaster games did it very quickly, and I thought the games had been made easier. The developers claims it hasn't and I guess the reason is just because of the much faster battles. The original FF1 actually doesn't require you to grind so much, it's just that battles are so darn slow that you need to spend hours just to get through a few battles.

[SNESPlayer]

I don't have an authoritative account as to why Dragon Quest was never really a hit as much as it is in Japan. But if I had to put a few hypotheses on the subject, they would be:

A) In analyzing JRPGs, we first need to take a look at the gaming landscape of the 80's: Nearly every device back in the day was incompatible with each other, meaning that if you made a game for one system, then for another you would need to heavily rewrite that and even outright change it in order to fit within the required limitations and or accommodations of the new system you're trying to port. This is important to know because Dragon Quest was originally developed as a console-first game from the get-go, with navigation and menus involving the usage of dpads and buttons. This is important because, outside of Japan and let's say we focus our attention on places like Europe, well, if you wanted to make or port a game over there, you needed to bet on micros as they were the major sellers over there (with the exception of Scandinavian countries), so not only you needed to rewrite the game and fit the controller, or in this case keyboard scheme (not a difficult job for an RPG given the genre's roots in computers) but also translate it. According to Wikipedia articles, both DQ1 and DQ2 have gotten ports for the MSX and MSX2, among other Japanese computers of its era (Sources estimate a PC98 and Sharp X68000 port) but then there's an issue (notwithstanding that from DQ3 and onwards, they wouldn't see a PC port until quite some time, and several of the entries in this franchise wouldn't get anything but the console release and maybe some remaster or remake here and there in another console or on mobiles), and the issue is...

B) The translations, or lack of thereof. In Jimmy's Maher series of articles https://www.filfre.net/2023/11/putting- ... 1-dorakue/, he describes the translation of those games as being, well, poor or strange. Issues that go as far as the release of FFVII during release, and even within a lot of of fans it is agreed that during this period, the flawed translations have either aged poorly or did not (Ted Woolsey's job is commendable despite the tight limitations if you asked me), but for the most part, JRPGs weren't exactly immediate ports in Europe, a place where computers even in the 90's still dominated the landscape (though the Sega consoles did fairly well all things considered), another issue of translations is what previous members mentioned regarding the amount of languages to translate to (Even if you focused on a small set, you wanted German and French, maybe Spanish and Portuguese for good measure if you wanted some of the sales in Brazil)

So, neither the MSX ports got a release outside of Japan, and DQ ended up sticking to consoles for the longest time. While that was going on, advances in gaming were done elsewhere 'Wow, Wolfenstein feels like playing an arcade game on the PC for the first time!', 'Awesome! The release of Doom changed everything!', 'Maybe I could check up and see what's this whole hubbub about X-COM!', and so many more influential games kept up coming and releasing up until the release of Dragon Quest VIII was made in Europe. But by then, without the understanding of the cultural relevance of the games nor getting the appeal these games brought, the reception by then was considerably milder.

If Enix had someone who was both proficient with several languages and a good programmer, who happened to like traveling and seeing the world too then things would have been much, much different. In such an alternative reality, where DQ was actually published on micros back in the day, translated into multiple languages and sold across the entire region, DQ would have definitely been much more desired outside of its native country. But alas, and from reading the book on the Untold History of Japanese Game Developers, Enix wasn't really that kind of company, and even then, things were much more limited in terms of interconnectivity back in the day, so I don't fault them for not spending more resources to get those games out everywhere when they were likely focusing most of their efforts into just keeping the franchise alive and with a fair cadence of releases.

[Oziphantom]

Why DQ wasn't more popular outside Japan is a puzzle to me, considering how popular DB was all over the world, but there seems there were many small factors that contributed little by little.

I feel this is more down the RPG being a heavily known and entrenched genre and DQ1 being a rather weak entry in to that Genre. FF1 was also a weak entry but it paid lip service to it at least. I think the formation of the term JRPG helped with marketing as you had to form a new genre for these style of RPGs as to tell people "it's not a game for the other people" and to tell said other people not to buy it as its not an "RPG". JRPGs during the 8bit and 16bit where a niche genre, even into the 32bit era. I remember my local game store got 1 copy of Star Ocean Second Story on the PS1, that was their allotment, and that was post FF7 Boom. To this end JRPG is seen as a derogatory term and the Japanese are trying to get people to drop calling them JRPGs and just call them RPGs.

Lets imagine that DQ1 shot the west the second it came out in Japan. By this point the RPG scene in the west is up to Wizardry III, expecting IV soon. Ultima IV is out and we are being teased about Ultima V. We have the whole Temple of Apshai. We have a couple of simplified AD&D games on Itellivision level hardware and Excalibur on better hardware.

However by 89 when it actually came out,
Heroes of Might and Magic is up to the 2nd entry, Dungeon Master and its expansion is out. Wasteland is out. Times of Lore is out. Ultima V is finally out, the Dragon Lance series is finally getting game adaptions after we get 2 Gold Box releases. Wizardry is up to V, and we are getting preview of Eye of Beholder.
All the while school children in the US are getting indoctrinated with the "light RPG" The Oregon Trail.

And then Japan turns up with the RPG with box art from a kids show, no party, no real magic, no real plot and wonders why RPG fans poke it with a stick.

[Pokun]

Weak titles for the American RPG veteran perhaps, but those wouldn't be as many as the NES players anyway, computers were expensive and not something almost everyone had like it is today. RPGs wasn't too common on the NES, and DQ1 is like the perfect introductory RPG. Simple, down-to-earth, exciting, addictive and appealing to a wide audience.


Considering DQ8 being the first title in Europe, when there were already tons of other Japanese RPGs in Europe, there is no mystery why DQ didn't boom in Europe.
RPGs were always featured in Swedish magazines every month so we knew all about DQ and FF games long before FF7, even if most of us had never played them, only those that imported American or even Japanese games. But the casual player masses (that didn't read gaming magazines) had never heard of them until FF7 was released. After FF7 came out, lots of (J)RPG fans appeared in school, especially fans of RPGs that were similar to the FF games (which would rule out any older DQ game) with catchy battle themes, a complex story and impossible combinations of class features, spells and elements.


Nintendo and Game Freak did it right with Pokemon. They knew it had the potential to become a blockbuster RPG hit outside Japan and it really did. They made sure to translate it to every major European language and although they changed names on some monsters and the miniskirts (to lass), they didn't touch the general concept and so the success was a fact.

Enix was a publishing company and had no game developers on their own. They always contracted Horii, Toriyama, Sugiyama, the Chunsoft crew etc as freelancers for each new DQ game. I guess they just didn't have the means to take the hit outside Japan. I think Nintendo even published DQ1 (as DW1) before Enix took over the publishing outside Japan.

[SNESPlayer]

Nintendo took the publishing of that game back then yes, but the game still wasn't exactly a massive seller of the system. It did however get a bit more of popularity thanks to Nintendo sending free copies away to Nintendo Power's subscribers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Qu ... e)#Release) and seeing this uptick of attention and popularity may have been the reason why the games kept getting released in the West.

Now we are entering into subjective territory here but, from the perspective of someone who didn't grow up with magazines of that era nor lived at the time those games were booming, I see Dragon Quest more of an interesting curiosity than anything else, specially the first handful of games.

With the advantages of emulation and game-sharing if you know where to look, Dragon Quest among its contemporary peers feels a little, huh, there. I dislike the notion of 'You had to be there to get it' but in this scenario I think it applies well to this game. Phantasy Star revolutionized the landscape by having a female protagonist being the center of the plot, as well as mixing elements from high-fantasy with scifi. Final Fantasy had its whole troubled development, the Apple II environment, the 'Yay, Dragon Quest III was delayed, we can do this!' and managed to reinvent itself on each entry (with the arguable exception of FFIII but that's a separate topic), Megami Tensei I and II were scifi postapocalyptic games in which you could summon your own party members and have them aid you in combat, Sweet Home managed to capture the essence of horror mixed with RPGs in ways few games did (would later inspire Resident Evil too), the Mother series whose settings were based closer to the real-world (directly inspired by DQ too, though with arguably more interesting NPC interactions and world-building), etc. (and don't even get me started on CRPGs from the era)

Dragon Quest combined elements of Wizardry and Ultima, reduced their complexity, and got Akira Toriyama designs. In what was a pretty grindy game with an awkward translation and magic systems whose utility varied depending on which entry we are talking about. Add a really barebones plot (so bare it's practically a skeleton) and you get a recipe for a game that I appraise and say 'Well, it exists!'.

For a 1986 game, it is impressive however, and given the limitations of developing for the Famicom during that era and knowing what to cut and what to keep must have been a fairly arduous process on balancing which features and which to cut, so from the POV of the Japanese audience raised with games of equal if not even more simplicity, DQ does stands out and Dragon Ball was getting really popular back in its native country so I would say DQ was a result of 'released at the right moment, at the right time', any later and I think other contemporaries of its era that released prior would get more people talking over there, but who knows.

Though I'll give credit to DQ, whereas that series is still going strong with new releases every now and then (and many spinoffs or remakes), its influences, Ultima and Wizardry, well, haven't. Ultima has been fundamentally dead since the release of Ultima Online and EA's disinterest and unwillingness to put any sort of effort into it. And Wizardry was a strange case where the rights of the franchise ended up going to a Japanese company because the series maintained popularity over there whereas it got mostly forgotten in the West. There are also several Japanese-exclusive Wizardry games to boot, got an anime OVA and all! As far as I understand it, there are still new Wizardry games popping up here and there unlike Ultima but they are either remakes or spinoffs, none following the big numbered releases so to speak.