History VideoGame / DragonQuestI

* %%EvilSorcerer: The Dragonlord.

* FinalBoss: The Dragonlord himself is the very final enemy fought in the game on his throne in Charlock Castle. He's the only boss in the game that is a SequentialBoss, and after he's defeated, the Ball of Light is reobtained and all enemies in the game vanish on your way back to the start.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: This is the only game in the series with only one player character (and, conversely, you will only fight one enemy per encounter), and the only installment in which dungeons are not naturally lit, necessitating a torch or the never-again-seen Radiant spell to navigate. There's even a separate command for using stairs, though its later remakes do away with this. There is also the peculiar required use of one-time-use magic keys to open 'any and every'' door you come across (eventually you'll be able to purchase keys as needed), oh and these doors reset when you leave. It's also far more open-ended than subsequent games in the series: the only place you cannot go to at the beginning of the game is the Dragonlord's island, though a generous helping of BeefGate makes toddling down to Rimuldar, Hauksness, or Cantlin right out the gate extremely impractical.

** [[UselessUsefulSpell Useless Useful Spells]] are actually useful.
** Your progression through the story is determined by your ability to survive [[BeefGate Beef Gates]] in the WideOpenSandbox world rather than by triggering events.

** Averted! The good news: Yuji Horii was, and more than likely still is, a fan of ''Wizardry'' and ''Ultima'', both of which had useful status spells. Mute/Stopspell and Sleep were two very handy spells taken from them. The bad news? Your enemies can also use them.

* MagicKnight: You, obviously. This game established all three traditions of making the player character a MagicKnight, tying when you learn spells to your level and learning Heal at level 3 as your first spell. You get spells such as [[HealingHands Heal and Healmore/Midheal]], [[PlayingWithFire Hurt and Hurtmore (Firebal and Firebane in the GBC versions; Sizz and Sizzle in the smartphone/Switch versions)]], [[ForcedSleep Sleep/Snooze]] (which isn't a UselessUsefulSpell for once), [[AntiMagic Stopspell/Fizzle]], [[EscapeRope Outside/Evac]], [[WarpWhistle Return/Zoom]], and [[EncounterRepellant Repel]].

The first in the groundbreaking ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'' series, ''Dragon Quest I'' (titled ''[[MarketBasedTitle Dragon Warrior]]'' in North America when it was first brought over) is the story of the descendant of the legendary hero Erdrick, who has been summoned by the king of Alefgard to rescue his daughter and defeat the Dragonlord, who is threatening the kingdom and has stolen the legendary [[MacGuffin Ball of Light]].

* DependingOnTheWriter: The hero is either from a small village in Torland who washed up on the shores of Alefgard (Alfregard in the GBC version) ''or'' an Alefgard native who had been training for the day he might be able to fight. Either way, he was already aware of his lineage, despite not having any way to prove it until he found his ancestor's seal in a perilous poison swamp. [[HilariousInHindsight You'd think they'd keep family trees]]. At least ''his'' descendants actually had his gear as family treasures.

** The Japanese versions of both the first and second game feature a Main/PasswordSave system; ''Dragon Quest III'' was the first entry with battery saves.

* MagicKnight: You, obviously. This game established all three traditions of making the player character a MagicKnight, tying when you learn spells to your level and learning Heal at level 3 as your first spell. You get spells such as [[HealingHands Heal and Healmore]], [[PlayingWithFire Hurt and Hurtmore (Firebal and Firebane in the GBC versions]]), [[ForcedSleep Sleep]] (which isn't a UselessUsefulSpell for once), [[AntiMagic Stopspell]], [[EscapeRope Outside]], [[WarpWhistle Return]], and [[EncounterRepellant Repel]].

* DubNameChange: In the NES version, Loto was renamed "Erdrick", Lars was renamed "Lorik", Dracolord was renamed as "The Dragonlord", and Lora was renamed "Gwaelin". Furthermore, Radatome was renamed "Tantegel", and several other towns were renamed as well (such as Mercado becoming "Cantlin"). Later versions of the game, as well as fan translations, went a little back and forth on keeping the altered names, going back to originals, or coming up with ''further'' alterations, although the smartphone and Switch versions, as well as ''VideoGame/DragonQuestBuilders'' (which uses the same setting), retain all of the NES names.

* DubNameChange: In the NES version, Loto was renamed "Erdrick", Lars was renamed "Lorik", Dracolord was renamed as "The Dragonlord", and Lora was renamed "Gwaelin". Furthermore, Radatome was renamed "Tantegel", and several other towns were renamed as well (such as Mercado becoming "Cantlin"). Later versions of the game, as well as fan translations, went a little back and forth on keeping the altered names, going back to originals, or coming up with ''further'' alterations, although the most recent smartphone version, as well as ''VideoGame/DragonQuestBuilders'' (which uses the same setting) retains all of the NES names.

* YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe: The original game had enough Faux English to make any classical English scholar shake in their boots. It was dropped in the UsefulNotes/GameBoyColor remake, however, the mobile and Switch ports come back full circle and returns to this but with much better results due to a better translation.

The game's release history is absolutely enormous - in Japan. In the '80s and '90s it was ported to virtually every platform imaginable -- the {{UsefulNotes/MSX}}, the UsefulNotes/PC98, the UsefulNotes/SharpX68000, the Super Famicom, and ''{{UsefulNotes/Satellaview}}''... the SFC port is notable, however, for introducing some significant graphical and performance updates to the game. North America never saw any of this; when a UsefulNotes/GameBoyColor port was produced in 1999, North America received it a year later... and then that was ''it'', despite a feature-phone version coming out in 2004 and the entire Loto trilogy getting a multi-version port archive release on the Wii in 2011. In 2013, a SFC-based smartphone version was produced (its visuals, however, were further updated and resemble those of the SNES remake of ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIII''), and this was released to the wider English-speaking world with an updated translation.

* YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe: The original game had enough Faux English to make any classical English scholar shake in their boots. It was dropped in the UsefulNotes/GameBoyColor remake, however, the mobile port comes back full circle and returns to this but with much better results due to a better translation.

* EvilSorcerer: The Dragonlord.

* PaletteSwap: Only the Dragonlord gets an exclusive sprite in-battle.

** The Magic Temple island south of Rimuldar and the bridge north of Haukness but south of Mountain cave. This is the area where you will fight Goldmans to gain 150-200 Gold Piece, which would be necessary to buy the most expensive pieces of equipment: Magic Armor, Silver Shield, and the Flame Sword.
** On the westernmost continent, at the very southern tip of the western side (due south of [[spoiler: Haukness, the ghost town where Loto/Erdrick's Armor is found,]]) is a strip of hilly land that has a high rate of MetalSlime encounters, mixed in with other high exp monsters. But since you cross two bridges to get there, it can be dangerous. In the original Dragon Warrior/Quest, RandomEncounters became exponentially more difficult with each bridge crossed.

** Haukness itself once you have the HEALMORE spell. The tile where you fight the Axe Knight is infinite, so you can keep walking a tile away and back to the tile to continuously fight it. This is one of the best ways to level grind, although you must watch out for the Sleep spell. If you can manage to hit it 2 times, then you are golden. If you are exhausted and want to continue fighting stronger enemies, you can always walk back to Cantlin to replenish; you can go back to Tantegel castle, but you would have to use repel to ward off the weaker enemies.

** The Ax Knight, which guards your armor, tends to cast sleep and constantly attack while you are sleeping. This alone shows that the status effect is very dangerous. If you get lucky with your own Sleep spell it becomes possible to [[SequenceBreaking Sequence Break]] the game by getting the Erdrick Armor almost right off the bat. The Dragonlord is also ''not'' immune to being sleep'd, as shown by the speedrun done at AGDQ 2019.

* WeCanRuleTogether: The Dragonlord makes this offer to you when you confront him. Most players just select no and get on with the battle, but if you accept, and you must accept more than once, you get a NonStandardGameOver (except in the SNES and GB versions where he wakes up in the town next to Tantegel Castle, where the innkeeper says that he had a bad dream). This is quite jarring considering the time it took to get to the castle and then go down to the lowest floor. The Dragonlord then says "ICanRuleAlone," though; the very next thing you see is red text.

** The Japanese versions of both the first and second game feature a Main/PasswordSave system; 3 was the first entry with a save battery in the cartridge.

* GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere: There is an extremely persistent rumor that, in the Japanese version, the Dragonlord does not actually turn into a dragon, and instead the final boss is his pet dragon who [[DragonTheirFeet attacks the hero after the Dragonlord is slain.]] This is false, however. In both the English and Japanese versions, it's a straight-up OneWingedAngel scenario.

** The Japanese version lacks the chibi-style superdeformed character sprites that would become standard in the genre, instead, using realistically-proportioned figures similar to those in the ''VideoGame/{{Ultima}}'' series.

* MagicKnight: You, obviously. This game established all three traditions of making the player character a MagicKnight, tying when you learn spells to your level and learning Heal at level 3 as your first spell. You get spells such as [[HealingHands Heal and Healmore]], [[PlayingWithFire Hurt and Hurtmore (Firebal and Firebane in the GBC versions]], [[ForcedSleep Sleep]] (which isn't a UselessUsefulSpell for once), [[AntiMagic Stopspell]], [[EscapeRope Outside]], [[WarpWhistle Return]], and [[EncounterRepellant Repel]].

* MagicKnight: You, obviously. This game established all three traditions of making the player character a MagicKnight, tying when you learn spells to your level and learning Heal at level 3 as your first spell. The spells are:
** HealingHands (Heal and Healmore, learned at levels 3 and 17, respectively).
** PlayingWithFire (Hurt and Hurtmore (Firebal and Firebane in the GBC version), learned at levels 4 and 19, respectively).
** StandardStatusEffects (Sleep, learned at level 7, [[UselessUsefulSpell and actually useful for once]]).
** AntiMagic (Stopspell, learned at level 10).
** EscapeRope and WarpWhistle (Outside and Return, learned at levels 12 and 13, respectively. Outside simply teleports you out of whatever cave you're in, while Return takes you all the way back to the town where you start the game).
** There's also a spell called Repel which lowers the rate of RandomEncounters, learned at level 15.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: This is the only game in the series with only one player character (and, conversely, you will only fight one enemy per encounter), and the only installment in which dungeons are not naturally lit, necessitating a torch or the never-again-seen Radiant spell to navigate. There's even a separate command for using stairs, though its later remakes do away with this. There is also the peculiar required use of one-time-use magic keys to open 'any and every'' door you come across (eventually you'll be able to purchase keys as needed), oh and these doors reset when you leave. It's also far more open-ended than subsequent games in the series: the only place you cannot go to at the beginning of the game is the Dragonlord's island, though a generous helping of BeefGate makes toddling down to Rimuldar, Hauksness or Cantlin right out the gate extremely impractical.

** This was the only Famicom/NES version to feature a background when fighting enemies in the overworld. Every other Famicom/NES version would have an all black background.

** Returning to Hauksness after defeating the Dragonlord will let you meet the ghost of Garin (the bard whose tomb you explored earlier in the game to obtain his Silver Harp), who shares with you the tragic story of Hauksness' past as a busy, bustling town before it was destroyed.

* FinalBoss: The Dragonlord himself is the very final enemy fought in the game, on his throne in Charlock Castle. He's the only boss in the game that is a SequentialBoss, and after he's defeated, the Ball of Light is reobtained and all enemies in the game vanish on your way back to the start.

* FisherKing: Defeat the Dragonlord, and not only do all of the other monsters disappear from the game, but the poisonous swamps will be replaced by fields of flowers in the remakes.

* ForcedLevelGrinding: If there wasn't any in this game, you'd likely be able to beat it in half an hour. For example, people have run thousands of simulations on emulators, and determined that the Dragonlord is nearly impossible to defeat at level 17 or below in the NES version, since you absolutely ''must'' have Healmore to stand a reasonable chance against the Dragonlord's dragon form. However, with a tool-assisted run, manipulating luck beyond reasonable means, [[http://tasvideos.org/1482M.html the game can be completed at level 7.]] Even more astonishingly, this has also been accomplished ''by humans'' now.[[note]]Level 7 is the ''absolute'' lowest level: you ''must'' have the Sleep spell in order to prevent certain enemies from attacking, by messing up their AIRoulette, whether it's a TAS run or the awesome non-assisted run. Otherwise, their attacks will devastate you in short order.[[/note]]
* GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere: There is an extremely persistent rumor that, in the Japanese version, the Dragonlord does not actually turn into a dragon, and instead the final boss is his pet dragon who [[DragonTheirFeet attacks the hero after the Dragonlord is slain.]] This is false, however. In both the English and Japanese versions, it's a straight up OneWingedAngel scenario.

* {{Hypocrite}}: A guy in Rimuldar states that all warriors should wear a ring, but when you wear the ring that one of the people who fought alongside Erdrick worn, he'll complain that it's for preening maidens.

** The [[FlamingSword Flame Sword]] is your sword version, with a +28 boost to your attack and has a special action when used as an item.
** The Magic Armor is your armor version. While the same +24 boost as the Full Plate, you gain HealingFactor of one HitPoint regained every four steps and reduces HURT and HURTMORE spells by 1/3.

** Erdrick's Armor. A +28 bonus to armor. Same properties as Magic Armor, but with 4x HealingFactor (1 HitPoint per step) and 1/3 resistances against fire breath. Additional bonuses include immunity to all terrain damage tiles ''and'' STOPSPELL.
* InterchangeableAntimatterKeys: The game has one-use keys (and they are magic, which explains one key fitting every door in the world). Lampshaded if you visit Rimuldar after beating the game: the magic key-maker announces he will devote the rest of his life to make keys which will not break after one use.

** Demon Knights due to having a absurdly high evasion rate. ''It is dodging'' indeed.

* MultipleEndings: There's one [[NonStandardGameOver bad ending]], [[spoiler:achieved when you try to join the Dragonlord,]] and three good endings: save the princess and return her to the King before defeating the Dragonlord, return the princess after defeating the Dragonlord, or don't save the princess. The (minimalist) end game cut scene varies a bit for each ending. In the last one, the hero travels off to far-off lands alone.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: In ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIII'', it is revealed that the Golem that you defeated [[spoiler:was created by one of Cantlin's/Mercado's townspeople to protect the town. Oops.]]

* NoOntologicalInertia: The second the final boss is defeated, random encounters vanish and the poisonous swamps are replaced with pretty flowers.
* NonStandardGameOver: [[spoiler:If you accept the Dragonlord's offer to rule together in the NES version, you get a badly translated speech, the text turns your-HP-are-low red, and the game freezes. This was changed in the remakes.]]
* OfferedTheCrown: After beating the game, the Hero is offered the crown of Alefgard. The protagonist declines, and decides to found his own kingdom in another country...with the help of the Princess.

* OrcusOnHisThrone: The Dragonlord pretty much just sits in his castle all game and waits for you to come and kick his arse. In his case, it's justified because he has already ''won''. Townspeople can't venture out of their towns for fear of his legions of monsters, the king is powerless to stop him because he has the princess, and there's no one able to challenge him. The player is literally the last hope, and at the start of the adventure, has trouble fighting slimes. Why worry about his chances?

** The Magic Temple island south of Rimuldar and and the bridge north of Haukness but south of Mountain cave. This is the area where you will fight Goldmans to gain 150-200 Gold Piece, which would be necessary to buy the most expensive pieces of equipment: Magic Armor, Silver Shield, and the Flame Sword.
** On the western most continent, at the very southern tip of the western side (due south of [[spoiler:Hawkness, the ghost town where Loto/Erdrick's Armor is found]]) is a strip of hilly land that has a high rate of MetalSlime encounters, mixed in with other high exp monsters. But since you cross two bridges to get there, it can be dangerous. In the original Dragon Warrior/Quest, RandomEncounters became exponentially more difficult with each bridge crossed.

** Haukness itself, once you have the HEALMORE spell. The tile where you fight the Axe Knight is infinite, so you can keep walking a tile away and back to the tile to continuously fight it. This is one of the best ways to level grind, although you must watch out for the Sleep spell. If you can manage to hit it 2 times, then you are golden. If you are exhausted and want to continue fighting stronger enemies, you can always walk back to Cantlin to replenish; you can go back to Tantagel castle, but you would have to use repel to ward off the weaker enemies.

* ThePowerOfLove: Once the hero has rescued the princess, he can take her love with him wherever he goes, and use it like a GPS. This comes in handy for finding one particular quest item.

* SequenceBreaking: The player is supposed to rescue Gwaelin from the Marsh Cave in order to get Gwaelin's Love, which tells your position relative to Tantegel. You're supposed to receive a hint that a PlotCoupon can be found exactly x steps away from Tantegel on the x axis and x steps away from Tantegel on the y axis [[spoiler: The Mark of Erdrick can be found 40 steps south, 70 steps east of Tantegel]]. Thus, you're supposed to use Gwaelin's Love to locate your position relative to Tantegel and search. However, that's not actually necessary, if you already know where to look (The PlotCoupon will be there regardless of whether or not you rescue Gwaelin), you can get it and skip rescuing Gwaelin to begin with.

** Princess Gwaelin is in the Marsh Cave that you enter early on in the game. The reason you can't rescue her the first time you enter is because one, you do not have a key, which is required to open up the door to her cell; and two, there's a dragon guarding said door that [[BeefGate you won't be able to beat at your current level and equipment]].

** The Japanese version lacks the chibi-style superdeformed character sprites that would become standard in the genre, instead using realisticaly-proportioned figures similar to those in the ''VideoGame/{{Ultima}}'' series.

* UnlockableDifficultyLevels: An interesting case, which only shows up in the Japanese release. In this version, choosing to join The Dragonlord will have him give you a password. This password will send you to the start of the game, but with lower stats than normal.

* WeCanRuleTogether: The Dragonlord makes this offer to you when you confront him. Most players just select no and get on with the battle, but if you accept, and you must accept more than once, you get a NonStandardGameOver (except in the SNES and GB versions where he wakes up in the town next to Tantegel Castle, where the innkeeper says that he had a bad dream). This is quite jarring, considering the time it took to get to the castle and then go down to the lowest floor. The Dragonlord then says "ICanRuleAlone," though; the very next thing you see is red text.
* WeHaveBecomeComplacent: The stated reason why the Alefgard's soldiers were defeated so easily by the Dragonlord is that the long years of peace since the defeat of Zoma had made the people weak.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: A retroactive example. Where's Erdrick's Shield (i.e. the Shield of Heroes)? The absence of his helmet was understandable, since it was just an iron mask, but the shield was a special magical talisman like the sword and armor.

* YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe: The original game had enough Faux English to make any classical English scholar shake in their boots. It was dropped in the UsefulNotes/GameBoyColor remake, however the mobile port comes back full circle and returns to this but with much better results due to a better translation.

In North America, it didn't make very much of a splash, in part because it arrived much later than it did in Japan - North America didn't see it until 1989, at which point the Anglophone RPG scene had already moved past the game that had inspired ''[=DQ1=]'''s creation inm turn.[[note]]This would become an unfortunate theme for the franchise outside of Japan.[[/note]] Despite this, Creator/{{Nintendo}} did try ''very'' hard to push the game, giving out copies to subscribers of ''Magazine/NintendoPower'' and giving the game a ton of attention in said magazine, as well as it featuring in several episodes of ''WesternAnimation/CaptainNTheGameMaster''. It proved decently popular, but the "hardcore" RPG players of America derided it for its simplicity compared to the ''{{VideoGame/Ultima}}'' and VideoGame/GoldBox releases of the time.

In Japan, however, ''Dragon Quest'' simply began ''everything''. It was there at the right time and place - Japan of 1986 - to get millions of people playing it, being a simple enough game for a child to play but long and difficult enough for even an adult to appreciate. While it isn't quite '''the''' true UrExample and TropeCodifier for the Japanese RPG - that would be [[VideoGame/DragonQuestIII its second successor]] - said successor would never have happened without this game, and it still had, and continues to have, a massive influence on the Japanese video game zeitgeist.

The game's release history is absolutely enormous - in Japan. In the '80s and '90s it was ported to virtually every platform imaginable - the {{UsefulNotes/MSX}}, the UsefulNotes/PC98, the UsefulNotes/SharpX68000, the Super Famicom, and ''{{UsefulNotes/Satellaview}}''... the SFC port is notable, however, for introducing some significant graphical and performance updates to the game. North America never saw any of this; when a UsefulNotes/GameBoyColor port was produced in 1999, North America received it a year later... and then that was ''it'', despite a feature-phone version coming out in 2004 and the entire Loto trilogy getting a multi-version port archive release on the Wii in 2011. In 2013, a SFC-based smartphone version was produced (its visuals, however, were further updated and resemble those of the SNES remake of ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIII''), and this was released to the wider English-speaking world with an updated translation.

In North America, it didn't make very much of a splash, in part because it arrived much later than it did in Japan - North America didn't see it until 1989, at which point the Anglophone RPG scene had already moved past the game that had inspired ''[=DQ1=]'''s creation in turn.[[note]]This would become an unfortunate theme for the franchise outside of Japan.[[/note]] Despite this, Creator/{{Nintendo}} did try ''very'' hard to push the game, giving out copies to subscribers of ''Magazine/NintendoPower'' and giving the game a ton of attention in said magazine, as well as it featuring in several episodes of ''WesternAnimation/CaptainNTheGameMaster''. It proved decently popular, but the "hardcore" RPG players of America derided it for its simplicity compared to the ''{{VideoGame/Ultima}}'' and VideoGame/GoldBox releases of the time.

* PermanentlyMissableContent: Erdrick's Armor and Erdrick's Sword. If for some reason you decide to buy any other sword or armor while obtaining those 2 items, there is no way to retrieve them.

* DoYouWantToHaggle: * Averted unlike the later entries. [[AllThereInTheManual The manual clearly explains]] that you, the player, can't haggle the price of sold items. In other words, Alefgard merchants [[KarlMarxHatesYourGuts will accept your old equipment for half its original price]] and won't haggle because they are very stubborn.

** Haukness itself, once you have the HEALMORE spell. The tile where you fight the Axe Knight is infinite, so you can keep walking a tile away and back to the tile to continuously fight it. This is one of the best ways to level grind, although you must watch out for the Sleep spell. If you can manage to hit it 2 times, then you are golden. If you are exhausted, you can always walk back to Cantlin to replenish.

** The Rimuldar Islands, particularly the south island, the Grave of Garin, the area around the town of Cantlin, and the lower levels of the Dragonlord's castle (although the enemies here are the rather tough EliteMooks).

** The Japanese version lacks the chibi-style superdeformed character sprites that would become standard in the genre, instead using realisticaly-proportioned figures similar to the ''Franchise/{{Ultima}}'' series.

* UnbuiltTrope: The game lacks many of the conventions of JRPGs to follow:

* ForcedLevelGrinding: If there wasn't any in this game, you'd likely be able to beat it in half an hour. For example, people have run thousands of simulations on emulators, and determined that the Dragonlord is nearly impossible to defeat at level 17 or below in the NES version, since you absolutely ''must'' have Healmore to stand reasonable a chance against the Dragonlord's dragon form. However, with a tool-assisted run, manipulating luck beyond reasonable means, [[http://tasvideos.org/1482M.html the game can be completed at level 7.]] Even more astonishingly, this has also been accomplished ''by humans'' now.[[note]]Level 7 is the ''absolute'' lowest level: you ''must'' have the Sleep spell in order to prevent certain enemies from attacking, by messing up their AIRoulette, whether it's a TAS run or the awesome non-assisted run. Otherwise, their attacks will devastate you in short order.[[/note]]

* ForcedLevelGrinding: If there wasn't any in this game, you'd likely be able to beat it in half an hour. For example, people have run thousands of simulations on emulators, and determined that the Dragonlord is completely impossible to defeat at level 17 or below in the NES version, since you absolutely ''must'' have Healmore to stand a chance against the Dragonlord's dragon form. However, with a tool-assisted run, manipulating luck beyond reasonable means, [[http://tasvideos.org/1482M.html the game can be completed at level 7.]] Even more astonishingly, this has also been accomplished ''by humans'' now.[[note]]Level 7 is the ''absolute'' lowest level: you ''must'' have the Sleep spell in order to prevent certain enemies from attacking, by messing up their AIRoulette, whether it's a TAS run or the awesome non-assisted run. Otherwise, their attacks will devastate you in short order.[[/note]]