Game

So after playing Dragon Quest 4, I was in a bit of a Dragon Quest kick again. I decided to take advantage of this by playing one of the many, MANY re-releases of the games that exist, starting with Dragon Quest 1&2 on the Gameboy. This is a combo package of… well, DQ1+2. Its what it says on the tin.

This came out in 2000, so over a decade after Dragon Quest originally did. Though it’s not actually the first re-release. DQ1 and 2 also got a release, as a single package, on the SNES. Obviously this is nothing like that, because that’s a major graphical overhaul. I’ll have to play it someday.

I played this off stream, because DQ1 is such a chill cozy game to me. It’s a nice grindy game to relax to while watching something, and I beat it in like 4-5 hours. I know it very well by this point. DQ2, on the other hand, was a bit more effort. I had only ever beaten DQ2 one other time before this, last year, so I didn’t know it NEARLY as well.

Game

The games are MOSTLY the same, but there are some significant differences. The graphics, of course, but there’s some different equipment in 1, backported from 2, and it felt like the grind went even faster than it does on the NES, so maybe numbers were upped too. Oh also the translation is different, so she’s no longer Erdrick, she’s Loto now. I prefer Erdrick. In DQ2, numbers were upped a bit again, it’s still kinda hard and rude, but it’s a lot less rude feeling than it was on the NES. The most notably differences, however, is you can get puff puff in DQ1 now, and in DQ2, there’s a scene where the Prince, the 2nd character you meet, gets sick and you need to heal him to get him back in the party. Which is NOT needed to beat the game, so you can beat the game with only two characters from that point on. As a challenge, I guess. I did not do that.

Dragon Quest, and many games from this point on, would begin re-releasing their older games adnauseum. But most of the time these days, it’s a super up to date version, or just the old version again with no differences. This was interesting. They could have made DQ1+2 on like, PS1 or something, but they didn’t. They used an 8-bit machine. So it’s really just DQ1 and 2 again, but with slightly different graphics, and slightly updated UI. Which hey, I like those games, so why not, right?