IN DEFENSE OF 8-BIT
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As a retro-gamer, game collector, and a fan of 8-bit video games from the 1980's and early 1990's, many-a-series have caught my eye, but the majority of those are pretty mainstream, and popular. Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Adventure for the Atari 2600 - but one series always seems to be the source of irritation of some when brought up: Dragon Quest.
Dragon Quest was localised as Dragon Warrior in the USA in 1989 and failed to catch on to any significant degree. So much so Nintendo was giving out free copies of the first game, and the second through fourth installments on the NES were hardly a whimper and a sigh, and were self-published by Enix compared to the boost of help Nintendo gave them for the 1989 US release. Honestly, it kept Enix from doing any significant business with the United States until sometime in the late 1990's when some Game Boy Releases, mostly Torneko/Taloon's games + Dragon Warrior Monsters, started raising some awareness of this then forgotten 8-bit franchise. My primary focus on this page though, is the original four games released for the NES/Family Computer.Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior 8-bit History Enix was started in 1975 by Yashuhiro Fukishima, on the bones of a publishing company known as Eidansha Boshu Service Center. In 1982, they ventured into video game publishing for home computers such as the NEC PC-88xx series, Yamaha X1, and FM-7. That year, to gather talent, they held a contest known as the First Game Hobby Program Contest. Two notables entered the contest.... Winning first place was Yuji Horii, who was also known as a columnist with the Shonen Jump manga. His entry to the contest, Love Match Tennis for the NEC PC-8801, placed high enough to make him a finalist, and eventually led to him being a finalist. The other was Koichi Nakamura whose entry was Door Door, also for the NEC PC-8801, a game where you lure aliens behind doors on platforms behind the doors. He made 2nd Place, won 500,000 Yen, and got the job with Enix. Nakamura had a nickname given to him by a friend, "Chun" which was both namesake of the player character in Door Door, and his development company: Chunsoft. As the story goes, Horii, and MAYBE Nakamura (I'm not 100 percent sure) got to take a trip to California for "Apple Fest" where he/they got to witness the computer RPG games Ultima and Wizardry running on an Apple II. These games inspired Horii greatly and lead him to start work on what would become Dragon Quest. During the period between 1983-1986, two other pivotal characters joined the team... First was Koichi Sugiyama, a well known Japanese music composer of much reknown...among other things...and Koichi happened to be a video game fan. He had a PC Shogi game that he wrote a fan letter about to Enix. Enix was impressed a celebrity of his stature admired their work, and with his musical expertise, asked him to come on-board Enix to compose music for their games. And lastly came reknown Manga artist Akira Toriyama who had worked on Shonen Jump and also had some reknown already from his work with Dragonball. Akira Toriyama was brought in late in the process in 1986 as a character designer for Dragon Quest specifically. This core team of Horii, Nakamura, Sugiyama, and Toriyama, contributing their talents lead to what Dragon Quest became. The goal of this first game was to make a Computer-style RPG that ran on a basic console such as the Nintendo Family Computer, and was palletable to a mass audience. As such, the game design had to be massively simplified. Instead of a "party" of multiple characters, you had one character that was a "Jack of all Trades" - the "Descendant of Loto", who could do melee combat like a fighter, but cast spells like a Wizard. The plot was kept fairly simple - the Dragonlord hid the Princess away and has shrouded the land in darkness, a prophecy says a decendant of the great Loto would rise to the occasion and save the continent from the Dragonlord's wrath. After a bit of a wait for the series to take off starting on May 27th 1986, Dragon Quest would grow to become a JApanese cultural Icon. Now, let's talk about those games, shall we?A Guide to the Games 
Dragon Quest was released on May 27th 1986. The story was that the Descendant of Loto would come to the kingdom to save the kingdom from the evil Dragonlord. The player played as a single protagonist with both Wizard and Fighter characteristics. While many consider this game "Spartan" and "small" compared to more modern games, you have to remember, this was the first JRPG - the original, ground zero. This game was the start of the whole JRPG genre.
Dragon Quest started off a little slow but eventually caught on surprisingly well, eventually pushing Enix to put out a sequel very quickly to catch onto the hype before it went away. Dragon Quest II began development surprisingly just before the launch of the first Dragon Quest, and had a small development window - so much so they did not have time to playtest it fully, leading to some mild critique by it's own creators as being "un-balanced". Particularly referring to a part in the story where the protagonists acquire a ship, and suddenly, and the game becomes non-linear all of a sudden, and slowly moves into some of the biggest "grind-fests" in JRPG history.
The new game expanded on the pillars of the original Dragon Quest with a more elaborate battle system, a 3 person party, more enemies, more locations, and a world 4 times the size of the original Dragon Quest. However, it recieves some critique for it's sudden difficulty spike, especially a massive grindfest near the end of the game due to the lack of "balance" between the ending bosses, of which there's more than one. But despite that, it was a massive success, selling over 2.4 million copies.
The new game featured a "class system" that could be leveraged using a one "Book of Satori" to change character classes, or upgrade from them. It also took place, the first half of the game, in a world based on earth, complete with stories from all over the globe including the Japanese legend of Oriochi, giving pepper to the king of Edinburgh (Eigerbear) castle, starting a new town (Plymouth Rock), and the town of Alihan apparently takes place in Austrailia. It also featured a version of the first game's world to tell the rest of the story, to not give too many spoilers. Then in 1989, two things happened.....
The new story of Dragon Quest IV was split into 5 chapters. Each one telling a backstory of the characters who would all later meet up to defeat the final villan.
This would be the last 8-bit Dragon Quest installment, as the new Super Family Computer or "Super Famicom" was already out, and Enix was already working on Dragon Quest V for it at this point (which would not see a stateside release for at least a decade afterward).
 Notice above the differences in sprites in Dragon Quest (1986, left), and Dragon Warrior (1989, right). The player character on the left never changes direction, this was changed for the 1989 NES release, also notice how the water has no shoreline on the left. These are just two of the many *updates* and changes made by Nintendo when updating Dragon Warrior for the western market.
This meant that the graphics were upgraded. Now NPCs and the player could face in all 4 directions. A new font was used with all the translations appearing in Old English. All religious and sexual references were removed. This included crosses at healers places, and removal of a certain girl at the "bath" in Kol who would offer "Puff Puffs" to the visiting hero - which in American culture would be translated to a b.j. - and even in Japanese culture, was later revealed to the subject sitting in a chair between two "slimes" with his eyes closed thinking they were her....uh....upper body assets. So yeah, Dragon Quest was a little more "grown up" in Japan than what we got in the states. Instead the lady just said "This bath cures Rheumatism" and left it at that. Also, the name of the hero's ancestor was changed from Loto to "Erdrick". Also, the artwork was designed for the new cartriage to give more of a late 80's "Heavy Metal, Dio, Dragons & Maidens" aesthetic, rather than the cute Anime graphics of the original cartriage. 
Dragon Warrior was a moderate, at best, success, with excess copies being printed up, leading to a 1990 promotion in Nintendo Power offering the game for for free with a Nintendo Power Subscription. This is why Dragon Warrior is the most plentiful and inexpensive of the four NES releases, because Nintendo over-printed cartridges, and those massively overprinted cartridges lead to more cartridges than interested parties to play them unfortunatley. Most people cite the "aged" looking graphics and the simple plot as the reason it was not popular, but that at all was not really true to American kids of the time like myself who were there. The truth was, kids in America, and kid/teen culture in America, eschewed and hated things like "Role Playing Games" - they were reserved to the weird "Nerd" kids at school that were ostracized - like myself apparently - and being a "Nerd" in 1990, was the most UNCOOL Thing you could be, and you wanted to be as COOL as possible as a kid in the USA. Cool kids played Super Mario Bros., SOnic The Hedgehog, Streetfighter, Techmo Bowl, Ninja Gaiden, Double Dragon, Contra....hell even Rush'n' Attack was considered "cool" compared to Dragon Warrior. Dragon Warrior was a slow burn, long run, non-instant-gratification Role Playing game for patient people, and American kids were not Patient - we were actually often getting pegged as being "ADHD" if we were male, and put on Ritalin! The last thing any of us wanted to do was sit in front of a television for hours beating up static images of monsters for gold and experience. It was a cultural difference that lead to Dragon Warrior's failure from what I can tell. Kids in America wanted ACTION, Dragon Warrior was not about Action, it was about strategy, and thinking, two things the primary Demographic for the NES was not into in the States. People cite Final Fantasy as being the reason why, but they're wrong, in most circles, it was just because nobody liked those "Dungeons and Dragons Computer Nerd Games". And as such, Enix self produced the other four installments afterward...leading to an increasingly harder to get series of releases as we approach Dragon Warrior IV.
My History with Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior My first encounter with Dragon Quest as a kid was with my ol' Bro-in-Law. He was about 16 or so, and I would borrow Nintendo games from him. I think this was sometime in 1991 or 1992. I borrowed Dragon Warrior II from him and could not figure the bloody game out to save my life. I just thought the title was cool. I remember I was messing in HIS savegame, in what was Alefgard/Breconary combo - which messed up my memories for years because those were also in the FIRST game. But the key to remembering which version it was was because my older sister was stumped with that damn Water Flying Cloth that was notoriously hard to procure. Remember, in 1992, the internet was not the norm, you could not simply pick up your phone or go to your computer to get online and find out that you needed to turn off the NES and turn it back on again. There was no GameFAQs, there was no walkthrough, there was no HSCBailey or Magmawk to watch a YouTube playthrough on the game. You needed a hint guide book, or call an expensive $0.25/minute hotline to get a hint from a "game councilor" - which I don't think anyone's parents really allowed. Since I came from an education elitist family it really was not allowed. So the game went back. And I remember what really put me off was ANOTHER Game I'd played, the one I called "Exodus Ultima" (actually Ultima III: Exodus).   The game responsible for me NOT liking RPGs for quite awhile, the unforgiving, non-linear, and quite mature for my age Lord British classic released by FCI/Ponycanyon in 1989 - Ultima Exodus! aka Ultima III: Exodus. Which was originally released for the Apple II in 1983!
Ultima: Exodus was released in 1989 in the USA for the NES, after a FAmicom release in 1987 via FCI/Ponycanyon. THIS was my first encounter with a console RPG, which was really just a computer RPG ADAPTED to a game console. Ultima: Exodus was hard, and very cruel at times. You had to literaly know enough about character classes, races, and how to properly dole out the points, or how to tailor your party using prefab characters well enough to have an effective "Team". There was almost Zero guidance on how the game was played or how it worked, and it seemed back then, Adults had a different dialect from kids, so sometimes instructions in the Manual were not that clear either. All I knew was that I could go in a dungeon, and get killed, or level up to level 5, and get killed, or attack towns-people and get killed by the buckethead guards! Open a chest, catch a cold, then die! Walk on what looks like water - nope, that's Lord British's personal Bandsaw-Blade flooring to the Castle's bank vault. This game did a LOT to put me off of playing RPGs for a really long time. It seemed like death for my party was lurking around every corner, waiting to strike with a fury, and leave us all ash in that cold and lonely roster of 20 hand and ready-made characters. So imagine now I'm playing this RPG where I have 3 people in a line - just like Ultima - with various numbers which to my brain could have been NFT, MPG, MFP, and R-E-S-P-E-C-T for all I knew at that age. If I wanted to do "math homework" I'd asked the teacher for extra credit! I just wanted to play the game, see new scenery, hear new music, and see cool shit happen, and that sure as heck wasn't happening in Ultima Exodus, and apparently, not this slightly more friendly looking Dragon Warrior II game. The last I remember of it before my collector years, we were at Toy Liquidators - this liquidation store in the "USA Factory Outlets" just off of I-85, and found a copy of Dragon Warrior IV there new in box, and I remember my mom and my oldest sister (who was the one playing Dragon Warrior II and Ultima) really trying to sell me on this game because it was cheap and looked really cool. One of my biggest regrets as a kid, was passing that game up...because of what came later. Skip ahead about 5-7 years, now I'm 12-13ish, I'm in Marching Band for my first year. Every afternoon is spent in the hot Alabama sun in 88% humidity holding a Trumpet at attention as bees buzzed around my face, sweat dripped down my face, all the while trying to not to get somewhat goofey from seeing the backs of majorettes all afternoon. I'm living off of gatorade, and Papa Johns large pepperoni Pizzas a lot, but walking around town so much on my days off that I'm burning twice the calorie count off every single friggin day. I come home every afternoon at noon and come back to the marching field at two till five - all so we can get an award winning marching band on the path to getting "1s" at contest. I had a friend the next town over, William, and I'd borrowed a copy of Dragon Warrior IV from him with some other games for the heck of it. Since I did not feel like playing anything "High Energy" as I was tired all the time - not sure if it was mono, a teenage growth spurt, or just the simple fact I"d been running myself down outside all day - but I wanted something CHILL to play. So in the fall of 1996 - from August to November, I played Dragon Warrior IV through all the way, and I was hooked! I remember getting through chapter one and being almost too sad to see that it was over already, almost feeling like if I'd bought the game, I would have been gyped - but that was quickly changed when the game opened a new chapter each time, like a Russian doll - a new story, with new characters. I loved the game, and wanted to buy it off of William (along with some games I'd sold him earlier). So the summer of 1997, I bought all of his games, put em' in a box on my inhereted Schwinn Cruiser from the 50's, and rode towards home, only for the front wheel to come off in the middle of the forest, and I had to walk home with the box in my hands. And not a copy of Dragon Warrior IV to be seen - much to my dissappointment - I did what any enterprising young kid in 1997 would do with some form of internet access - I took to the internet. Just as 1997 was taking off, so was interest in collecting for the now *dead* Nintendo Entertainment System. And Dragon Warrior IV, of course, was one of those games going for about $45 loose at the time. In 1997, $45 was a lot of money to a teenager, especially one struggling to find work in a southern town because he did not belong to a church. And I did not have internet at home - so I could not simply order the game in the normal way. I'd have to pool the funds, go to the Auburn Draughton Library, order the game using my hotmail account, go to the grocery store, get a money order, mail the money order without mom seeing, and pray I don't get ripped off! This really discouraged me, especially when I'd already had an entire package lost in shipping from a one "Sidartha" way back around that time or so. Interested, I wanted to start at the beginning. So one day I'm at our local, dying, K-mart store. For you kids that don't know what K-Mart is, it's like a Wal-Mart, but smaller, and more stuck in the late 70's/early 80's. Basically, our K-Mart looked like it did back in 1983 or whenever it was opened, and they had a video game section that was kinda' like the ghetto remains of a once highly active one. And on a little spinning rack, just outside Electronics, were shrinkwrapped Nintendo games going for $5-20 each. For $15 sits the very cartridge you see below, loose, with a slip of paper inside for "instructions".... Yes, this is my very copy of Dragon Warrior purchased at the Opelika K-Mart in 1997 for $15. This is the same cartridge you see on my YouTube Let's Plays, and even my original savegame from 1997 is still on here! Insane, huh. With fully maxxed out stats, level 30, best weapons, armor, princess saved, and killing the DragonLord takes little effort at all, lol.
I proceeded to play Dragon Warrior every day after school, for hours at a time, like I did 4, and found it just as good. I was determined to be a completist this go out. Basically, that was every afternoon, I switched from Dragon Warrior to playing Loverboy, Night Ranger, and Journey on the guitar, and then back, then maybe compose for awhile. At this point, this was my teen years, sleeping in, playing Nintendo, writing stuff on guitar, and learning guitar. I knew I wanted the other two games, but they were still fairly out of reach online. And reading reviews of Dragon Warrior II and III online kind of scared me. Some people loved them, but it seemed more found them boring, could not figure out the story, making me fear maybe I and IV were the only two with a cohesive, linear story I could follow in a relaxed state. I picked up Dragon Warrior III at a local Opelika Game shop that opened up just near Hardees and Lowes when I was 21 or 22. At the time I was working with a guy named "Manny" who worked at THAT game shop after we worked together at Cock of the Walk. I bought the game for $34 and started playing it off/on for the next 20 years. As I was working on building an I.T. career, and then going back to bands, for the next period of maybe 10-15-20 years, I would play it in spurts. I kept coming back to III off/on between 2006 and 2010, typically putting myself to sleep during the grinding sessions to level up my party. Then I'd wake up on the futon/couch hours later, nearly on the brink of insanity from sleeping to the overworld theme on repeat for hours on end. I would usually then shut the game off and choose to do more productive guitar-related activities. And I still wanted IV, but the prices were going up. II was always a possibility, and was the last game I'd try and get. Mind you, this was the SAME Savegame I started in 2003, and yes, that's the one that's on there as well. Skip ahead another 10-15 years, now It's 2020, I'm a 37 year old man now, married, with a career. I'd sold off the NES collection years before for a nice penny, and kept only the games I was interested in playing. AT this point, I'd put my name on a list at Cap'n'Games in Sparks to get my hands on Dragon Warrior II and IV if they ever got them in stock. Alas, in the summer/fall of 2020, I get a call on the way home telling me NOT to come home for awhile because our psycho neighbor was causing trouble again and now there were 7 Sparks PD police vehicles outside our unit dealing with the screaming lunatic next door. Unsure where to go, or what to do to pass the time till it was safe to come home, I got another call on my brand new hands-free in my truck from Cap N' Games telling me they had Dragon Warrior II and it was...I can't remmber if it was $24 or $52 or what, I was REALLY stressed out. So I agreed and drove over there and proceeded to kill a few hours while the police did what they needed to do with our neighbor while I bought the game. While there, the guy at the counter was probably the FIRST person I ever heard praising the game. Saying it was one of his favorites. The next summer, I got another call from Cap n' Games - this time telling me they had my "holy grail" (my words, not theirs) - DRAGON WARRIOR IV! I was at work and could not wait to get the darned game. As soon as I was off, I was going to gather EVERYTHING in my collection that I did not use, a pile of controllers, lots of NES and ATari games, even a copy of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse - just so I could get this ONE cartriage. They wanted $156 for it, and I was not paying that price if I could avoid it. What I brought them took them a friggin WEEK to process! And in the end, I went OVER what I owed and got some shop credit so I snagged up some stuff I saw there that I wanted. And that's with a few items (particularly Atari 2600 carts) being rejected due to an "overstock" of them. I think the only week this long for me was buying my Fender Jag-STang, Fender Jaguar, or the one leading up to my Wedding. And of course, I played it, and ripped through it from memory like a Japanese bullet train. Shortform. Just to make sure the cart worked 100%. I was still working my way through Dragon Warrior II still - now in Rhone, beating the crap out of everything in sight. Then in 2022, I caught COVID-19 during the summertime. Yeah, these games got me through a BAD bout of COVID-19! When I was not falling asleep to Arcus playing Nintendo games, I was playing these out-of-whack sessions of Dragon Warrior III and IV to finish my original savegames, II being 2 years old at this point, and III being almost 20 years old (those batteries are bloody amazing!).
I just kept coming back to Hargon's castle....to beat the shit out of the minibosses before making it to the final boss - Hargon himself, and then surviving to Malroth, only to be foiled 3 times before I succeeded at it. I remember I was somewhat detached for some reason, probably because I was sick. So it was probably one of the most relaxing gaming sessions I'd had. The final battle looked bleak - I now was down to just the second one in my party, everyone else dead, and managed to defeat Malroth and Hargon, and put the world at peace once more. 
This was probably the most anti-climatic battle of Dragon Warrior II ever. I was too sick/tired to even let out a faint "yay" afterward, I just wandered back everywhere, to talk to NPCs, in the comfort of no enemies on screen, only to finish up at Midenhall and roll the final credits.
Honestly, I think this might have helped me get better, the hilarity of the Archfiend Baramos, who decided to take up residence in his swimming pool of all places, right outside his Lawn mower shed. Seriously, his castle is hilarious, especially when you're faring a 101 fever and in so much pain otherwise you're just wishing for some form of mercy that makes even roaming an 8-bit hell hole look like an exploratory good time to get your mind off all the work you're missing. 
Then for the next day I managed to take care of most of the quest in Alefgard....eventually making it through Castle Charlock which was surprisingly not that terribly hard for some reason. What WAS hard, was once we met this giant Kelvinator Refridgerator named Zoma who had apparently been borking the Archfiend's mom and created a whole pile of Baramos clones including "Barmos Bonus" "Baramos Bonus" "Baramos Bogus" and "Baramos Zaramos" or whatever they were - hey, cut me a break, I was sick. |
This original outing looks a bit different from the later US release that We'll talk about further down the page. First off, there were some religious references, and even some kind of mild sexual situations in this initial release from Japan. Also, the graphics were different, with shorelines appearing more blocky, all of the sprites facing toward the player full time - requiring a directional command window to spawn when the player wanted to converse with any NPCs. The text was thinner, and quite a bit more readable to some. Also, names were different (ie Loto vs. Erdrick). Also, savegames were managed then on the still only 3 year old system via a series of complex passwords.
Dragon Quest II was released on January 6th 1987 in Japan, and was a massive hit in Japan, beginning and strengthening the Pop Culture icon Dragon Quest would become in Japan. Despite all it's challenge, it was such a smash hit, it warranted yet another sequel.
In Dragon Quest II, 100 years after the first game, and apparently as a part of terorrist activity in the world, the evil Wizard Hargon invades Castle Moonbrooke killing everyone, leaving few survivors. One of which is a soldier whose last purpose in life is to inform the king of Midenhall of Moonbrooke's demise at the hands of Hargon. Too old to quest, the king of Moonbrooke (one of Erdrick's descendant's many sons) sends off the prince of Midenhall to find his cousins, the Prince of Cannock, and the Princess of Moonbrooke (assuming she's still alive) to seek out and defeat Hargon.
Dragon Quest III further expanded on this and was released on February 10th, 1988 in Japan, and became the hugest hit yet. It also was the last installment in what is referred to as the "Erdrick Trilogy". Now taking place at least a century before the first Dragon Quest.
In Dragon Quest III, the hero is brought before the king of Alihan for his 16th birthday, tasked with a quest to save the world from the Archfiend Baramos. He's instructed to form a party and goes on a quest almost 4x the size of Dragon Quest II, and 8x the size of the original Dragon Quest.
First off, the fourth installment of Dragon Quest - Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen, was put into development with a new story, and then released on February 11th, 1990 in Japan, marking the start of the *new* Zenithian Trilogy.
Meanwhile, in America, Howard Philips playtested the original Dragon Quest sometime in 1988 or 1989, and based on feedback both from Japan, and the quality of the product, Nintendo of America estimated it could be a smash hit in their home country as well. So Nintendo decided to *update* the game for western audiences, and tweak it to comply with NoA's strict Family Friendly standards. Also, the name had to be changed from "Dragon Quest" to "Dragon Warrior" because the copyright holders in the USA of the title "Dragon Quest" were those that owned the pen and paper roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons, so it had to be changed until the copyright expried sometime around 2000.
Also among graphical changes was the addition to shorelines, give the graphics a more up-to-date appearance, but still not enough. The game was released in August 1989 just a little bit before dragon Quest IV in Japan, and was under direction of Satoru Iwata with help from Yuji Horii. Another technial improvement was the update to using Battery backed savegames like then the Legend of Zelda was using, and Final Fantasy which came out around the same time, as opposed to the first two games in Japan which used cryptic passcodes to retrieve savegame data.
Dragon Warrior II was released in early 1990 and self-produced by Enix, and had slightly less as wide reception as the original, updated, and tweaked release. However, Dragon Warrior II was ALSO tweaked and updated, again removing the password system for Battery Backup, and religious and sexual references removed to meet NoA's family friendly standards. Also, an introductory sequence not included on the original 1987 Famicom version of Dragon Quest II was added, portraying Hargon's attack on Castle Moonbrooke, whereas the Japanese release just saw the soldier post-attack entering Midenhall to notify the king with his last words.
Dragon Warrior III was officially released in 1992, though the work was done in 1991. This version too had many updates from the Japanese 1988 original, including a fancier title screen, a new opening sequence featuring Ortega fighting a Dragon on a volcano and falling into the volcano with it, the character creation music from Dragon Quest IV being added to the once-silent menu, and the original Alefgard theme being added to the ending Medley that became a staple in the Dragon Warrior releases since the first release in 1989. Some suppose Sugiyama did these new tracks but there's still arguments that a 3rd party might have been brought in to make the changes. Also, the monsters recieved an experience boost to make the game easier. The game was released without much fanfare and hence is a bit more expensive - about $50+ on the second hand market for a loose cartridge.
Dragon Warrior IV was released also in 1992 a little after Dragon Warrior III and was the least sold of the lot for multiple reasons. For starters, the series was never that popular for the reasons I mentioned earlier on this page, but ot add to it, by 1992, the North American Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES, was released. The changes were not as radical this time, with the violence/religious/romantic references removed, some boosting to the Casino to make bigger payouts, and some new graphics here and there for the copyright and ending credits.
Beating Dragon Warrior II with COVID (2022) - I sat in the theater room chairs with a fever of 102, sweating profusely, running to the bathroom periodically...freshly woken up from grind-induced slumber - two silver baboons on screen, awaiting the next blast of digital pain I was about to dish out on them. As I beat the ever loving tar out of every creature in Rhone hardly even aware. I remember a few times I'd fall alseep for a little bit, then wake back up, and think I was watching ARCUS playing Dragon Warrior II, only to realize I'M the one controlling the game....almost as if on auto-pilot, like I'm directing some kind of demented TV show.
Beating Dragon Warrior III with COVID (2022) - Much the same as Dragon Warrior II, I put in Dragon Warrior III, and loaded up my old savegame, which was stuck on some Pirate Treasure Puzzle. I remember vaguely the first day, just dredging through the Pirate Pizzle, Eigerbear, the Oriochi, and then just barely making it to Baramo's castle to make my first attempt to crash his pool party.