Dragon Quest Mega Money
With the release of Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake has come some welcome news for Square Enix: the remake is a massive sales-success (despite that awkward name). The classic Dragon Quest title has already sold north of 800,000 copies in Japan—in its first week.
In a lot of ways this news isn’t surprising. Dragon quest is a massive franchise in Japan and the remake being lucky to benefit from the huge popularity of the Nintendo Switch. But apart from all that is something else, and it’s that the Dragon Quest 3 remake is another example of classic videogame fun. For some reason there is still a reticence among some publishers to recognise that there is a market for old fashioned videogames in the contemporary market. There was surprise from many at the success of Octopath Traveller and Triangle Strategy for example, when those games, both closely following after the formula of older games, were proclaimed as commercial successes. Sony seems intent to chase after popular trends, most recently with the disastrous ‘hero-shooter’ Concord, but seemingly ignoring the kind of games that so many fans want to see, and only got when Astrobot released—a very good game by the way. Sega was surprised to find out that PC gamers would be interested in playing Persona games. And, returning to Square Enix, once the king of JRPGS, Square appears determined to give us every type of Final Fantasy game except the kinds that drew fans to the series in the first place: the classic turn-based RPG.
Nintendo seems to understand this; it’s why they still release Metroid, Pikmin and Kirby games that, although dwarfed by the sales of the larger Nintendo franchises, still represent value to the Big N as games with dedicated audiences.
I’m not suggesting that every game should imitate what’s gone before, far from it, or that the people behind games like Final Fantasy 7 Remake or Final Fantasy XVI aren’t talented because they clearly are. Rather, what I am putting forward is the suggestion that the games industry would be in better shape if more companies rebalanced their creative output towards what has made the relatively young pastime of videogames so successful, as well as looking for new and creative ways to make games enjoyable rather than trying to be something else.
Playing videogames, writing about videogames, considering videogames—that about sums it up. Videogames are the one hobby that I’ve kept since I was only little, zapping ducks on the NES or knocking out MR. X. And when I’m not enjoying classics from the bit generation of games or checking out those earliest of polygons, I’m probably playing something from today’s age of modern gaming: if I’m not complaining about it. Something I’m doing at the moment? I started dipping my toes in the vast sea of Kemco JRPGs.
