I can still look at this game art and remember the amount of dedication that this game required. It is permanently etched in my memory as something that I really enjoyed. I researched it, i dreamed about it, i went over new strategies in my head at school. It was thanks to Dragon Warrior that I knew that RPG's were going to be my favorite type of game forevermore...and that has been the case.

It is said that Final Fantasy was the birth of all RPG's as we came to know them since and that may be true. However, if you are familiar with the layout there is no denying the similarities between FF and Dragon Warrior (in some markets it was called Dragon Quest.) To be honest I don't which was released first.

Before anyone starts talking about copyright enfringement take a closer look at the box art. Both FF and Dragon Warrior are made by Enix, so there is that.

The game featured battery back up, which was SUCH a big deal at the time because we had all grown accustomed to writing massive passwords down a paper and the slightest mistake in your penmanship meant that your entire progress was lost. Having a battery save was a relatively new notion in 1986.

It might not seem like much by today's standards but the above map (and remember there are dungeons there too) was massive. The game wan't exactly open world though, because it was impossible to access areas that you are not supposed to be in next. The gameplay was linear, but that didn't matter.

This franchise has made nearly a dozen sequels and also now appears on multiple platforms including android. It has been updated a LOT since 1986 and it is likely free or near free. I haven't played the game in many years but I remember it encapsulating months of my life. I had notebooks, the map poster next to me likely on the floor as we probably still had a 900 pound floor television in the late 80's, and basically just studied this game until I mastered it.

we have come to loathe them today and they are all but eliminated but random encounters with enemies along the path was pretty much the norm back then. You could walk ages without a fight or end up having a fight ever couple of steps. I guess we didn't mind so much back in the day but I doubt this sort of combat system would be tolerated today.

I didn't include any videos of this because they either don't exist or they are hours long. There were no game trailers in the 80's. Basically this game functioned a lot like Final Fantasy and at least initially was more popular in Japan than FF was whereas in the USA the opposite was the case. It is worth a look, even if you are just going to play the app version on your phone.