All right! Tonight I'm replaying an NES game which I have long considered one of my favorites of All Time, Dragon Warrior IV! Unfortunately I'll have to emulate this, since my friend Yūji Horii insists that he won't re-release Dragon Quest games without extras. I can appreciate that, but still I'd really like to see this on the Virtual Console, you know!? Flipping a coin determines that my Hero is male, and the Random Name Generator decides I shall be known as Marc Simeon. Marc it is!
I'm going to take this moment to direct everyone to the Realm of Darkness, which contains a lot of info and really good maps—at least for the NES—which will help you follow along (or play along!) with me.
We begin the story with Chapter 1. Excellent counting! As it turns out, I am not Marc at all, but a Royal Soldier named Ragnar. The King comes to speak with all of us soldiers, and we learn that we've heard about children going missing. The mothers from Izmit came to the King in tears this morning, so we can't ignore them any longer. This leads naturally to a hypothesis that the King generally ignores things until people cry, which will require further testing.
Looking around the castle before leaving, we find some useful gameplay advice, along with an old man who tells he's researching "something" but won't say what. Suspicious! Diligently searching all the drawers yields a single Medical Herb in a room in the southeast. Invigorating!
Outside the castle in Burland, there seems to be nothing of note except for an old man who offers to come along and then proceeds to lurch after me, giving up his quest once he finally catches up. Oh, and Flora is missing her husband Alex. I can't afford any better equipment than what the King has given me, so I buy some Herbs (both kinds, just in case!) and head out.
To the northwest, there is a cave. Everywhere else is rivers and mountains. A dangerous walk to Izmit, no? In the cave, the first branch off to the right holds a Medical Herb, nicely replacing the one I just used. Next treasure, following the path that opens on the left, has a bit of money. Heading upwards leads out. Back on the surface, we are near a tower on an island. Is it important? Hey, it's in the game, isn't it?!
Wow, there are a lot of monsters! Eastward, and I reach the village just as the sun sets. A sign nearby reads, "Do Not Play in the Woods." Sound advice! Poking around in the town at night, there is a Medical Herb in a drawer in the nun's room at the inn, and a peeping tom lurking beyond the bushes waiting for her to take a bath. Eww! Upstairs in the inn, I am glad to find that the cat's anus is not drawn in like it was in Dragon Warrior III. The innkeeper's son Pocos was playing with some shoes and vanished. A lead! It also seems that Alex, missing from Burland, has lost his memory and has been imprisoned for stealing bread and generally acting like a manchild. The horror! But the kids love 'im. Having nothing else to do, I spend the 6G at the inn to make it morning instead of wandering about the wilderness.
Nothing else really happens in the daylight. A fellow soldier says the tower looks suspicious, and a child says Pocos flew into the sky. They can't be connected! Since I now have some money, I buy a Wooden Hat and call it quits for now.
Now for the Japanese original release! Since I ended up with a male Hero on the other, I'll take female here. My random name shall be...Lynn Stirling! We'll go with りん [rin]. Playing up to the same point where Ragnar left off, it doesn't seem anything was changed except for names (like Ragnar's! See below). I expect that to be true for the duration, and I'll list the changes as they come. I'm not going to list everything, just a few names of people and places.
Of course, since I'm not attempting a full translation this time around, I am more than likely going to miss any subtle changes or interesting censorship, like the priest in Dragon Quest II who asks if you believe in God, but in the N.A. version instead asks you for the time and yells at you if you don't tell him. That was trippy.
EDIT: The table of name changes between the U.S. and Japanese versions, originally located here, has been moved to the next blog post and expanded.
Next time I'll go into the DS remake, and then finally play the PlayStation disc that I imported six years ago! Also, new as of 1/4/13 is the first video of my video LP of DQIV, added to the next blog post since I played the DS version there.
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