Despite the 1.5 million Japanese sales the trio tallied up with Dragon Quest I, the transition to America wasn’t so smooth.
A trademark conflict with the Dragon Quest board game left the series with the"meh" title of Dragon Warrior. On top of this was substantial censorship, with strict Nintendo of America guidelines coming into conflict with the racy dialogue and religious iconography running through the game. Coffins had to be replaced with ghosts, and crucifixes were somewhat contradictorily replaced with Satan-pleasing pentacles.
Not only dazzling the RPG crowds, Dragon Quest has had immense success outside of its original land-roaming/monster-bashing/shop-browsing formula, with over 34 related titles released in Japan to general critical success. Torneko, a greedy shopkeeper appearing in DQ IV, starred in Torneko no Daibouken: Fushigi no Dungeon. Exploring randomly generated dungeons, ithelped launchthe increasingly popular Mysterious Dungeon series,which has also starred Pokémon and Chocoboamong others.
