Dragon Quest El-Heaven

I hope it’s not nostalgia talking when I say: 

How magnificent,

How charming,

How all-encompassingly perfect

Dragon Quest XI is.  Dragon Quest in general.  It is absolute fucking perfection.

If that’s the kind of thing you dig, that is.  And I do.

I have to say (and this may take some time to say), that playing the Dragon Quest games throughout my life has been a gratifying, eye-opening, and sanity-binding adventure that has spanned more than half of its course.

It all started with Nintendo Power magazine.  Doesn’t it always? I’d been happy in my Zelda and Mario worlds, the Capcoms the Konamis and everyone else fortunate enough to get a license to print games for Nintendo.  Contra.  Mega Man.  Castlevania II – the first game that I purchased (after the Mario and Duck Hunt cross-cartridge).  But also let’s just shout out to Rygar, Strider (or Stri-dar), Zelda II, River City Ransom – hell just listen to the song: youtube.com/8bit/Zelda.mp3

My game world was highly informed by that monthly piece of postal gold: Nintendo Power.  I’d walk home from school, focusing on the moment I’ll pull down the flap of the mailbox and retrieve that blessed volume with my name printed on the cover (later they’d use address stickers).  I had a subscription to NP from Issue no. 2 (cover art featuring a human Simon Belmont holding Dracula’s severed head by his Romanian ponytail or whatever) and it continued well past Issue no. 100.  But there were changes.  

There were a lot of changes and discoveries during that time.  Nintendo Power was teaching me tons – how to read, for one, at least read better, or read with passion.  Also, those were the formative years of my late elementary to junior high school years, so school probably taught me a couple of things as well.

Oh yes, well, anyway – as a loyal subscriber, it felt rather shocking and hurtful later on to learn that if you got a subscription to Nintendo Power, they would give you a free fucking video game.  Yes, ladies and genitalmen, A free fucking $50 at least video game called Dragon Warrior.  It would be free to all.  Free to most.  Free to subscribers.  If you subscribed.  Right now.  See, it wasn’t my time to re-up my subscription to NP, so I never got that free game.  Everyone else did, me, I just got to read about it in stark detail.

But I got to play it, eventually, all right.  My next-door neighbor, B had a copy – possibly free with his subscription – and eventually I think I got my own copy at some weird NES game swap meet in a hotel next to the Bob Evans – but oh yeah – I played it, and it was epic.

Dragon Warrior I was known as “Dragon Quest” in Japan, and boy was it ever.

Good game.  I mean, really great game – they changed all the original Japanese dialogue to match the Olde Timey Englishe tone that the game was going for – “Thou art dead.” was the Game Over message, and “A Drakee Approacheth!  What dost thou do?”  (I continue raving about Dragon Quest to the Drakee but mildly diss it).  All in all, it was kind of a half-assed approach to localizing by today’s standards, but that’s only because we have practiced it again and again and gotten it down to a science by now.  It was extremely clever and creative of them to do it HOWEVER they did it, though, and a free game promotion in crazy old USA?  That shit sold a LOT of magazines.  Lots of people got that game for free, but I’m guessing maybe only 20 to 25% of them finished it.  Max.  

I mean, hell, in a way it was like the Dark Souls of its time.  You have to level up, or be really gud to proceed in that game.  I mean, you just don’t even have the stats to fight the Dragon at the end of the marsh cave until at least… level 5 and LOTS of luck, pal!

That game – Dragon Warrior – taught me to grind.  Level grinding was a guaranteed way to put victory within your grasp.  I took that principle and applied it to my Zelda II game, and wow, with a little stat boosting and downthrust practice, I could really whoop some Hylian ass.  Increased stats are basically a given in games today, but back then, the “growth” of characters was kind of a novel concept because you’d be WRITING over their whole avatar of the game, whereas before, most “power-ups” (such as growth-promoting mushrooms) were temporary, and you’d be dead before long and have to fuck it up again and again.  Dragon Quest had a feel of continuity to it – a game could last months.  For some, it may last years.  

I feel like level grinding now is a kind of “exercise” akin to walking or jogging, if we were to consider electronic games like these “sports,” but fuck sports.  Fuck the Olympics, too, while I have the platform.  But in the RPG Olympics, I say that Dragon Quest takes the gold for all-time best RPG series by any video game creator, ever, and Final Fantasy is probably guaranteed the bronze – assuming they Finally kill the Chaos and test for illegal substances in their shittier entries to the series.  Silver goes to whatever RPG franchise YOU think is the best.  I’m absolutely sure it is.  If you played it and enjoyed it like nothing else, then it deserves your love, respect, and not necessarily someone like me to sing its praises.  But I’m in a singing mood, so let fucking rap about Dragon Quest!

I beat the Dragonlord.  I saved Alefgard.  Several times.  Several times THROUGH.  Game is definitely beatable in a single day once thou knowest that what thou must doeth.  However, I didn’t play another DQ game until about 25 years later – It was Dragon Quest VIII and it was bought used for ¥1000 on a beautiful summer day.

I was a young man in Japan, living with my now-wife in a two-bedroom apartment next to Den-Den Town in the Great City of Osaka.  I even remember the video game store I bought it at – a little place just down the street south of Tennoji Station, a little past where the foundation of the Abeno Harukas building stands today.  A Super Potato store, perhaps, or an indi-er one, and I saw Dragon Quest VIII in the bargain bin for just $10.  I was like, “Baby, I’m buying this game,” and she was like “Good.”  (It must be noted that earlier, the future Mrs. Epicuzi bought my ass a brand new Playstation 2 a Christmas or so earlier, though she has very little interest in games herself.)

It was a glorious time, playing that game in those days.  Idyllic.  It was just so beautiful and fucking fun.  The music, the open landscapes, the fact that all the characters go “bubllululbubublu blblubbbuubu blub,” when they’re talking to mimic their speech.   The same level up chime, the same sound effects, the same brilliant Toriyama character design, the smell of tatami mats in the baked summer air – sure, one of these things is not like the other and I won’t deny that my sentimental feeling for those days plays a big part in mine ardour for thee, o! Dragon Quest, ye.

But really – it is like the very best RPG series of all time.  Each volume of the flagship series is its own unique adventure in its own corner of the DQ Multiverse.  There is a lot of consistency across them, and the traditions live strong today.  I love them.

Three weeks ago, I was browsing the shelves of my local Book Off (a chain of used book, comic, CD and game stores), and came across Dragon Quest XI for the Nintendo 3DS.  This game has been out for at least two years now – I’m guessing that most people who’d ever play it had already played it.  And now they were selling their used copies, and the stores finally had so many in their warehouses that they didn’t know what to do with them all.  

That’s how I got Dragon Quest VIII so cheap when I did, after all.

I called my son.  “Guy?”  

“Yeah, Daddy,” 

“I’m at the Book Off right now.”  

“Oh yeah?”  

“Yeah – and they have Dragon Quest XI for ¥1000.”  

“Cool.”  

“What do you think, should I pick it up?”  

“They don’t have it for the Switch?”  

“They might, but it’s like 4000 at least.”  

“Well, yeah, I guess you should probably buy it.”  

And I did.  And it was the best ¥1000 I’ve spent all year.

For one thing, my son (the one just on the phone with me now) had recently cleared (or “beaten” to you Westerners) Dragon Quest IX.  It is needless to say that I am a very proud father of both of my kids.  But Guy found DQXI (not a typo) to be so good that he ended up buying his own copy for the Switch (¥4000 used).  We had a good race going for awhile.  I was about 20 hours in, and he was RE-playing the parts he had on my copy for the 3DS.  I was ahead for a long time.  Then he caught up, and our levels were neck and neck for a few days, and then I had to go to werk and he had summer vacation, oh hell he CLEARED the whole damn game weeks before I would – or will – you see, I still haven’t beaten it yet.  

God damn, I gotta get on that.  

Let me just say I’m taking my time.  I’m grinding.  I’m crafting.  I’m technically still working here at home, okay?  I’m trying to read the Japanese script and learn new words from it, okay?  Yes, I’m playing this game in Japanese, and it’s not a big deal, but it does slow me down here and there.  Life is damn busy and demanding, but for some things it is more rewarding to take it slow than speedrun the game in two weeks like my son.

And oh may damn, it is a rewarding game with a wonderful story.  It’s in the words of a great man and Questor of Dragons himself, “Unfuckwithably solid on all platforms.”  You said it, mang.  Even on a dirty-ass 3DS screen the game just kicks ass and stomps slimes.  

God damn, dad, clean your DS any time this decade?

Those magical feelings I had in my Summer of Dragon Quest VIII?  Those days I look back on with a unique flavor of fondness and memory?  I am living them again a decade later in the Summer of Dragon Quest XI.  These are the good old days as I know they will be looked back upon.  We art blessed.

Right.  Back to the grind.

The Book of Genesi

I’m a good consultant of the past. You can come to me to redress any issue that ever happened over the entire course of history or time, because there’s a good chance I have a record of it somewhere. In a journal, in a half-finished story, in comics, notebook illustrations, CD-Rs and cassettes, and of course whatever’s still rattling around in the old noggin.

I have the luxury of remembering just about everything that ever happened (at least when it comes to the things that really matter – video games, for one thing), not because my memory is excellent, but because I have just enough free time to not let go of the past, forgetting to seize time by the reins and gallop forward like most do, throwing themselves into the work of their passion, or down dark or light-dubious paths to their respective demises – nope, I stay fixed at a tortoise’s pace, sweating and living just like everyone else, but with a secret knack for hoarding time and memories.

It gives me time to write accounts of the past like this one, and with my newfound powers, I will resuscitate, re-litigate, and probably reiterate that I am the Master of this new telling of the past, and how / what a telling it shall be.

This particular episode – we’ll call in the first in a disjointed string of infinite episodes happening throughout the spectrum of dimensional-integrated spacefuck, shall be called:

Genesis, Book One

1:1 In the beginning of the 16-bit era, God thus spoke: RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE 1:2 And we rose to live out the tale of the Altered Beast. 1:3 And it was cool.

Cool kids had Genesises. God that plural looks awful. But no, I’m serious – some of the coolest kids I knew had a Sega Genesis long before I ever put an SNES controller in my hand. My best friend, K had left town after third grade, and we had grown up Nintendo together. That kid was so fucking cool, he’s still like my best friend today. From about 1987-89, we played the ghostridden fuck out Ninja Gaiden, Mario, and Rygar and knew each others’ mental catalog of soundtracks and skills when it came to anything NES. And then the motherfucker just left. Well, it wasn’t his fault. His family moved to Colorado for about a year, and then by next fall of 1990, BOOM he was back! And he had a shiny new Black Genesis with him.

That was fucking baller – a Genesis in 1990? Man, you had to be way ahead of the curve. I remember when his family came back just to visit during Spring Break that year like a preview, and I got to try it out – he had Revenge of Shinobi, a Fist of the North Star Game titled “Last Battle” and of course, Altered Beast and remember just being fucking awed by it. Fucking Sega, what had you made!? Or what you had made!

Another friend of mine who was in my fourth grade class, S, had a Genesis too – his house was where I probably played one for the first time. I liked S, and we had some things in common – Ninja Turtles, skateboarding later on, but visitng his house was comparatively rarer than when I used to hang with K. For one thing, he had a huge dog – like a boxer or something named Peg, and she was very sweet, but I’m not crazy about dogs, plus Peg a very slick coat and stinky smell, so for that one reason, I guess that I didn’t hang out at his place as often. Nah, I won’t blame it all on the dog.

But I remember that I’d have put up with the smell of 100 dogs just to continue ONE MORE TIME in Ghouls and Ghosts back in that year that K was gone. God, I was entranced by Capcom’s greatest iteration of the G&G series on the G. I played that game so much that first weekend that if his house was an arcade and a credit was a quarter, I would have spent like $50 at least. That shit was damn addictive, and the fact that the Genesis sound chip could use actual human voices blew me away much like chimpanzees are freaked out by magicians on the other side of their enclosure’s glass, but that was more of an Altered Beast perk.

Ghouls and Ghosts was its own special thing – finding the right weapon, maintaining your armor, not getting turned into a duck – plus that soundtrack, holy shit, I really do think it’s the best entry in the Makaimura series. The bosses and graphics were unlike anything I’d seen in my cute little Nintendo world. The first boss was a fucking giant suit of armor with a demon’s head on the end of one of its arms, and used at least 16 colors making it look like something, well, out of the arcade! That was the only thing you could compare it to at the time – Arcade Graphics, ha! S did have an arcade in house, and I guess it was the feeling one gets when you’re in an arcade and you’ve somehow found the custodian’s keys, and you’ve deftly set all the games to Free Play mode. I just couldn’t get enough of it.

Eventually, though I managed to conquer Satan or whatever in that game did move on. With like, life and stuff, too.

Did I mention K came back in the fall of 1990? Hell yeah. That summer before fifth grade, we’d hang out, play with lighters, listen to DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s Homebase album and play the fuck out of both his Genesis games as well as our healthily maintained Nintendo libraries. Best of both worlds shit, and I remember K was even good enough to lend me his Genesis for a period of time – like the whole console and his entire library of games for like a MONTH (INCLUDING STRIDER) – HOLY FUCK BALLS!

Now that was a good time. During it, I beat the fuck out of G&G, got a pretty good character going on Sword of Vermilion, could get to the last boss of Strider (still never beat that amazing Genesis version, I’m afraid), and I know at some point I beat Revenge of Shinobi, too — god damn, I remember K and I straight rocking out to the soundtrack of that one. It was cool shit. We loved the soundtracks to all those fucking games and later on would sample them mercilessly in the pursuit of creating original rap albums, which is another story for another book in another bible.

The funny thing about cool kids and their Genesises, though (god, we need to do something about that plural), is that when I had possession of K’s, yet ANOTHER friend from another portion in my Venn Diagram of friends, J came over and became just as hypnotized by it as I had been. As many had been . As many more should have been and yet fewer will be. Was I now the new cool kid with the Genesis?

J and I had grown up playing Sierra computer games – King’s Quest, Gold Rush and the like, but he also had a healthy love for the Dragon Quest (nee Dragon Warrior) series on the NES. When he experienced the Genesis at my house, though (why do I doubt he remembers this moment as clearly as I do?), man, that kid was HOOKED. I forget what his jam was, but for all intents and purposes, it might as well have been trying to kill Beelzebub and Satan in Ghouls and Ghosts.

I remember getting a bit frustrated with him as became increasingly dismissive of my presence in my own fucking house. I’d be like “hey you know you can double jump and shoot 8 shurikens at once? And he’d be like “Yeah, no doi. Can I get something to drink?” It was like he didn’t need me around, like AT ALL while he stared into the abyss and chucked his projectiles at the hordes of programmed enemies. I knew the addiction well and let it slide as best I could.

It’s not easy being the cool kid with the Genesis. Ain’t all roses and rainbows or goofs and goblins and shit!

Anyway, I fucking love the Genesis, and think that that whole console war thing between Nintendo and Sega was a fucking proxy war using we consumers who could only afford one or the other, to fight it for them. Fuck that noise!

I will concede. It’s true in some places that Genesis does do what Nintendon’t – one example is showing blood and the gorier fatalities in Mortal Kombat 1. Also, Sonic the Hedgehog. Okay fine – yes, it’s true, but there’s also like a ton that Nintendid what Genedidn’t… Segadon’t.. whatever the fuck – Sega didn’t do: Final Fantasy, for starters. Sega didn’t do fucking Zelda. Sega didn’t do Mario, Sega didn’t have Nintendo Power goddamn magazine. It’s such a weird statement, but you have to give them credit for inciting that Us and Them mentality with a slogan as catchy as it was.

Incidentally, the Console Wars today are so stupid that Sega now happily makes games for Nintendo systems, and Nintendo refuses to participate in the stupid charade of war altogether, now matter how much Sony and Micro$hit egg them on. “We’ll fucking make VR out of cardboard, turn a plastic circle into a catch-all exercise device, and put a another company’s IP into Smash Bros. What you got?”

“Uh, we’re gonna release Halo again.”

“Don’t forget Madden!”

“And John Madden’s Footballs 2.03K!”

I imagine that there are many cool kids today who enjoy a wide range of games and other experiences. They are the future, after all. And I bet the drugs they take are fucking fantastic, too. But they’ll never be as cool as my other friend M, who rocked both a Super NES AND a Sega Genesis in 1991.

(And he was actually kind of a douchetool.)

Holy shit, I remember this kid, M was gifted ToeJam and Earl AND his brand new Super Nintendo on the same day that winter (okay maybe it was Christmas). He was rich, and I think his dad was the senator or former senator of our state. I VERY rarely hung out with M, but my friend B was in his class, and the weird Venn Diagram of friendships intersected in my favor when I was invited to stay over at M’s on that glorious, glorious day.

We actually played more ToeJam and Earl than anything that night, even though I had been sweating and maybe even drooling bullets in anticipation for the new 16-bit Nintendo system. TJ&E was so fucking fun and just genius in its zeitgeist of cool funky young people’s culture. It stands the test of time and doesn’t violate any of our modern day sensibilities.

Jammin’

RAP

TOE Jammin

(Big Earl).

RAP RAP RAP

(Big Earl)… Sorry – I’m just remembering the feature in that game that would allow one or both players to just jam sound effects over the bass-poppin’ BGM to that game. Your character would dance and snap and say shit like, “Jammin!” according to the button input and was such a fun distraction.

I also remember the titillation of finding the secret level, Level 0, which had a 1-up granting lemonade stand, and a hot tub with cute girls in it – and you could go chill and chat with them! Like, you could have Earl’s fat ass jump in the hot tub and press C to spit some game at the girls, and they would “giggle” or “titter” in response. Don’t tell any of the culture police out there, I guess, but that shit was sexy as fuck. Kinda. For a 12-year old.

M was pretty cool, I guess, but some of the coolest kids who had Genesisisises? I hadn’t even met them yet, and they were off being cool in a world that I had no knowledge of and no jurisdiction for chronicling over. Also, let’s hear it for kids who were never taught not to put prepositions at the sentence’s end. Cool in somebody’s world, I imagine.

Let’s talk about J. No wait – J was the kid who went crazy over my.. K’s Genesis and then his family moved away… Guess we’ll have to name this guy.. Jon. That could be his real name or not.

In 5th or 6th grade, I met Jon, and Kelly and I both ended up becoming pretty good friends with him. Jon’s family had a Genesis, but Jon had gone to another elementary school across town. I didn’t meet Jon until well after that crazy night at [redacted]’s house, but Jon would throw these CRAZY fucking sleepovers in like 6th or 7th grade inviting like 8 or 9 kids to his big-ass house, and I’d be one of them from time to time, oh lucky me!

The game at that time which I played like a maniac until like 3 in the morning (most of the kids at these things didn’t sleep all night) the first time I stayed at Jon’s? Road Rash. I think that was made by E fucking A. The Genesis version? The absolute best, never replicated in any meaningful way on any other console. EA’s also never done anything of comparable value since. Well, maybe, I don’t know – but the Genesis version of Road Rash was tits, and I knew that Jon was cool as fuck. Today he’s my DM in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign that’s been going on for like three years. He and his brothers played the Phantasy Star series, which of course I had heard of but didn’t play myself, one because I didn’t have a Genesis of my own, and two, Final Fantasy was my RPG jam, but mostly one, because I didn’t have a fucking Genesis. They say it’s awesome and intense and traditional as anything out there, but today the Phantasy Star series is so monstrously extensive that I just wouldn’t know where to begin.

I’d meet another cool cat later on down the line, way after Genesis games and even Saturn games had pretty much stopped being made. I don’t know if it was the Genesis he had growing up – the Sega CD, perhaps – but damn that guy was cool. Still is. We’ll call him C and he’s a reader of this dead ass blog – that’s how fucking cool C is. I won’t embarrass him or myself any further, and should probably be working on something important or life-related now. Lunch, perhaps, then more Dragon Quest XI.