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Episode 769: The Dragon Quest Legacy (Patreon)

Published:
2026-05-15 10:00:14
Imported:
2026-08
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Jeremy: I don't know if people understand that Retronauts is a living thing with a will of its own. The end result of this episode looks nothing like what I had envisioned or intended, and yet it achieves all the things I wanted to accomplish with this conversation! We were going to talk about the 40th anniversary of Dragon Quest (May 27!) by discussing what the game brought to consoles and to the role-playing genre, as well as the cataclysmic impact it had on gaming. Then, we were going to top it off by reading some letters from Retronauts listeners.

But at the last second, I had a sudden impulse to start with the mailbag segment before moving on to our discussion. Well, we ended up turning the mailbag into the entire episode, reading your thoughts aloud and sharing our perspectives in response to your comments. This resulted in a wholly organic conversation that covered all of our intended points and topics, but ended up being driven by you. What followed was a remarkable episode of the show like none other before it. How many podcasts can say that about their 769th episode? And it's all thanks to you, the Retronauts listener. You're awesome. (Well, my fellow conversationalists Nadia, Diamond, and Kevin deserve some of the credit, too.)

Edits: Greg Leahy | Art: Greg Melo

04:37 - Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake: People

16:52 - Dragon Quest VII Reimagined: Garden Where Time Sleeps | Dragon Warrior I & II (GBC): Kingdom of Alefgard

25:12 - Symphonic Suite Dragon Quest: Fight (I)

32:17 - Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime: Boingburg

43:36 - Symphonic Suite Dragon Quest: King Dragon (I)

52:56 - Theme from Goldfinger (Instrumental)

1:01:48 - Dragon Quest IV (FC): Homeland (Hero's Theme)

1:08:42 - Symphonic Suite Dragon Quest: Finale (I)

1:22:54 - Symphonic Suite Dragon Quest: Dungeons (I)

1:32:40 - Dragon Warrior (NES): Tantegel Castle

Closing - Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake: Overture

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Comments

littleterr0r

Never thought the words "tit cookies" would be uttered in a Retronauts on Dragon Quest least not by Jeremy Parish.

littleterr0r

I was one of those fools who already had Dragon Warrior and a subscription to Nintendo Power which made me ineligible for the free game promotion having gotten Dragon Warrior for Christmas in 1989 and a subscription to Nintendo Power way back at the start. Dragon Warrior was my first JRPG and I did like it enough to ask for Final Fantasy 1 for my birthday the following year.

Shaxbert

I have to check the Discord more often; Dragon Warrior informed a LOT of my gaming and pop-culture habits, even to this day! I always appreciated how cool Nintendo Power made the original game look, but I came to it after I'd been exposed to Final Fantasy, and it was hard for a younger me to go back to in a time where games were getting more sophisticated with every new release. One 1990 Saturday morning, though, I found myself wide-awake at 6AM despite not needing to get ready for school, so I decided to tour through the forbidden early hours of weekend-morning television to see what happened before my usual SatAM capitalist nightmare. On one channel the answer was: Strange foreign cartoons! I don't recall what else was in the lineup, because the show that hit me like a thunderbolt was the 1989 Fuji TV-produced Dragon Quest: Yuusha Abel Densetsu, localized by Saban Productions as Dragon Warrior. Loosely based on the story of Dragon Quest III, the story followed the adventures of a brave young fisherman named Abel and his companions, goofy strongman Moko, wise and lecherous wizard Yanak and the capable but hotheaded swordswoman Daisy, charged with rescuing Abel's sweetheart Tiala, who had been abducted by an ancient and terrible evil named Baramos to resurrect a legendary dragon who would bring about cataclysmic destruction. I'd seen anime before, but never quite understood what I was looking at. I 100% understood what Dragon Warrior was, though, and when the English dub finished up its 13 episodes and looped back around to the first, I wanted MORE. Fortunately, I'd discovered this series just as I'd discovered another wild new frontier: the Internet! My parents were early adopters of the Prodigy Interactive Personal Service, and I'd spend hours haunting the messageboards of the Video Games and Anime BBSes, on the hunt for anyone who might be able to tell me if there was more Dragon Warrior- or if there was anything remotely like it. And in this way, I learned of anime in general; word got out slow in those days to rural North Carolina. I made friends, some of which I still chat with to this day, who would send me VHS cassettes of raw Japanese episodes of various series (along with slightly-shady professional subtitled episodes of others; the statute of limitations HAS to be up). Never got much word on Dragon Warrior itself, but I discovered another hobby I enjoy today. Meantime, I decided that if I couldn't find official closure, I'd make my own. The anime featured characters designed by Akira Toriyama (though he went uncredited in the Saban localization, which was evidently something of a sore spot), and like many budding anime-style artists before and since, I started teaching myself how to draw with his character designs. I've stuck with it over the years, and for better or worse, I still sit down to the graphics tablet when I need to unwind on a weeknight after work and scribble out some big-eyed, small-mouthed nonsense. I eventually went off to college, and in my first spring semester, the university opened a Japanese language curriculum, and I was quick to enroll- mostly so i could stand a chance of understanding some of these cartoons I'd been watching for years. In time, this would lead to becoming the first exchange student from my university with a sister college in Nagoya, and during my junior year abroad, I'd finally get closure on the Dragon Quest: Yuusha Abel Densetsu story thanks to a very well-stocked local video rental shop. Ultimately, it's no great shakes as an anime, but sometimes an anime doesn't have to be a classic to be a major influence on a person- it just has to hit a the right time: 6:30 AM on a Saturday morning.

Nuno Amaral

More like Drag on Quest VII

Jason J

Yes please make a randomizer episode!