Topic: 2015/09: Dragon Quest I & II (J) (Super NES) - FlyingArmor

[JonLeung]

Dragon Quest I & II (J)

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to FlyingArmor's Dragon Quest I & II (Super NES) maps.

There's a trend in remastering and/or making compilations of games from a previous generation.  This isn't just a recent thing, nor was Super Mario All-Stars the only one that took the 8-to-16-bit leap.  In Japan, the first two Dragon Quest games were rereleased together with upgraded visuals on the Super Famicom.  The first Dragon Quest is credited for establishing the JRPG genre as we know it.  The second game is a worthy sequel that expands the world and deepens the story of the Erdrick Saga.  At times, in Japan the Dragon Quest series has been more popular than even Final Fantasy, so this bundle of the first two games is certainly worthy of a remake, and good for anyone who missed them the first time around.  Later, there would even be a Game Boy Color rerelease that makes its way to North America, so Enix clearly wants everyone to remember console JRPGs' roots.

It's always quite an undertaking to map a whole RPG, but FlyingArmor has mapped two here.  Marking maps with the contents of treasure chests, indicating hidden items, and showing how stairs and teleporters connect may be unsurprising additions to maps at this point, and practically expected for a Maps Of The Month honouree, but of course are always appreciated.  You'll never get lost in Alefgard (and the rest of the world) thanks to FlyingArmor!

So to recognize the effort put into dual-wielding these classics, FlyingArmor's Dragon Quest I & II (Super NES) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for September 2015.

[FlyingArmor]

Thank you very much for honouring another piece of my work in this way.

Speaking of games from the NES era getting updated for the SNES, I can't really think of any other than Super Mario All Stars, and the first three Dragon Quest games. There are probably others though.

[JonLeung]

Well, there is Ninja Gaiden Trilogy, which bundles the three Ninja Gaiden NES games onto a Super NES cartridge with upgraded visuals.  I believe some people would question if the audio is improved, though.  There's also Tetris & Dr. Mario, which includes both games, as well as a "Mixed Match" mode where you can play both in a versus match.  Though Tetris is Tetris, though it exists on the NES, it was also elsewhere at the time, so it's not necessarily an upgrade of the NES Tetris per se.

There are other games with releases on both the NES and the Super NES, certainly in the overlapping later years of the NES and the early days of the Super NES.  In some cases the Super NES versions actually come first, like Mario Is Missing!, Mario's Time Machine, and Joe & Mac, so I guess those are downgrades...

(I noticed this month's and last month's games both have "Quest".  Maybe I just have too much "Nintendo Quest" on the brain, trying to organize that whole thing...)

I probably could have honoured this a lot earlier.  The game credited with starting the JRPG genre is kind of a big deal...

[FlyingArmor]

Just as I finished making my previous post, Dr. Mario immediately popped into mind, so that's definitely another example, for sure.

Games that were released around the same time for both systems I didn't count, Wario's Woods, being one such example. Though looking up Tetris 2, it looks like the SNES version came out about a year later, so I would count that as an upgrade since the visual style is completely different.

The great thing about Dragon Quest is that is helped simplify RPGs overall. Games like Wizardry were hellishly brutal, judging from the game diaries I've read of the first few titles. The Ultima series I find a bit more forgiving, though compared to Japanese RPGs, is still quite intricate and complicated, such as its system of casting magic.

I tend to prefer Japanese RPGs because of their simplicity. I'm not much of a fan of creating my own characters, which is much more commonly found in Western RPGs. Distributing points in statistics is not my idea of fun. I find it a troublesome obstacle if I just want to see what a certain game is like if I'm new to it. I simply want to start a game and have the story begin unfolding right away. And because I am learning Japanese and play a lot of JRPGs for that very purpose, I don't want to be bogged down in minutiae; I want to concentrate on what the characters are saying. I think this is probably the big reason why all I ever play these days are RPGs for the SNES, Playstation, and other early consoles. It certainly doesn't hurt finding them on eBay for $10 or less per game.