Dragon Warrior (NES)

Dragon Warrior

Platform:	NES
Year:	1986
Developer:	Chunsoft Co., Ltd.
Buy:	Amazon

Dragon Warrior AKA Dragon Quest is one of the first role-playing games to make it to the NES. You play a knight, one of the last descendents of a legendary hero known as Erdrick. It is your job to seek out and defeat the Dragonlord, and return the stolen the ball of light to King Lorick. The game uses the now-standard top-down view where the player can see the surrounding terrain as they walks across the land of Alefgard.

During your quest you will battle monsters from lowly slimes to powerful dragons. Battle is relatively simple. You fight only one enemy at a time, and your commands are limited to fight, spell, item, and run. There are a couple puzzles as you explore the world, allowing you to gain more powerful equipment and unique items.

While the game was certainly a step forward, giving the NES a badly needed RPG, it's not without its faults. Most of the game is spent grinding, fighting the same monsters over and over again, in order to gain enough gold to buy the next best equipment, and enough experience to level up. This tediously slow progression rate dampens the enjoyment of the game.

Screenshots

The title screen.

Good King Lorick explains my quest.

About the leave that starting castle.

The land of Alfgard is spread out before me.

Fighting the deadliest enemy of them all... THE SLIME!

The bustling town of Brecconary.

Music

Dragon Warrior's soundtrack has been cited as the source of all JRPG music to follow. It was the first video game to get its soundtrack to be performed live by an orchestra. For this reason alone, this soundtrack should be looked at as a classic, setting the stage for VGM.

According to Masumi Takimoto, the game's sound driver was created by Takenori Yamamori. Koichi Sugiyama would send his music to Enix, in which the sound programmers converted it by hand into their sound engine. While Masumi didn't work on Dragon Warrior, he designed the sound driver for the fourth game with Tadashi Fukuzawa, who also wrote the sound driver for Dragon Warrior III. Takenori also designed the sound driver for Dragon Warrior II.

Recording

#	Title	Composer	Programmer	Length	Size	Listen
01	Overture March	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	1:23	1.7 MB
02	Chateau Ladutorm	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	1:10	1.1 MB
03	Tantegel Castle	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:40	654 KB
04	Unknown World	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:44	599 KB
05	Townspeople	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:59	910 KB
06	Fight	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:51	906 KB
07	Dungeon (Level 1)	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:37	514 KB
08	Dungeon (Level 2)	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:39	561 KB
09	Dungeon (Level 3)	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:40	588 KB
10	Dungeon (Level 4)	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:41	625 KB
11	Dungeon (Level 5)	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:43	635 KB
12	Dungeon (Level 6)	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:46	667 KB
13	Dungeon (Level 7)	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:48	692 KB
14	Dungeon (Level 8)	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:51	718 KB
15	King Dragon	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	1:03	1.2 MB
16	Finale	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	1:36	1.8 MB
17	Enemy Defeated	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:01	33 KB
18	Level Up	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:02	49 KB
19	Inn	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:02	44 KB
20	Dead	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:04	91 KB
21	Fairies' Flute	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:05	53 KB
22	Silver Harp	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:05	99 KB
23	Rescued Gwaelin	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:05	101 KB
24	Rainbow Bridge	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:04	96 KB
25	Cursed	Koichi Sugiyama	Takenori Yamamori	0:02	53 KB