With another “Dragon Quest” video game in the works and getting released soon, one of the geniuses who worked in the said video game series dished out on how it was working on it. Akira Toriyama takes the memory lane and reminisces on the beginning of “Dragon Quest”.
Akira Toriyama is the game artist for the “Dragon Quest” video game series and he has been working on it since the first installment, which was released three decades ago. Toriyama spearheaded the designing of all the characters in the video game series, which many avid players have grown fond of. In line with the promotion of the up and coming “Dragon Quest XI” as well as the said series celebrating its 30th anniversary, a special episode titled “Dragon Quest 30th Soshite Arate Na Densetsu E”, which is translated as “Dragon Quest 30th: And Now Towards A New Legend”, was aired on NHK on Dec. 29 last year.
Toriyama described his experience working on the “Dragon Quest” series as a combination of fun and hard work. He further revealed that the first years working on the said franchise was sort of a casual pursuit for him as he was also busy enjoying and working on his popular manga novel, the “Dragon Ball” series, which debuted its publication in 1984. He thought of it as a casual pursuit because the first video game has not yet caught on with popularity.
He continued to reveal more and admitted that he never expected that “Dragon Quest” will go on for a very long time, let alone continue on for 30 years. Even before, he divulged that he was quite unsure whether he could withstand working with a franchise for a long time. Because of that, he honestly said that he actually refused to work on the other titles, afraid of what the future might hold for him and the said video game series.
Toriyama has worked on over 500 characters, which consisted of the main characters, villains, and even minor monsters, in the first “Dragon Quest” installment and he liked it that time since he was free to use his imagination. Just think of how many he has designed so far now that the series has already spawned ten main installments and another new one coming out soon. The “Dragon Quest” artist said he then went through some sort of a slump working on the character designs.
He said that it was not easy having to think up new and original designs for every video game they developed and that eventually he was running out of ideas. He revealed that several of his unusual concept ideas, which he thought were fresh and new, were actually rejected. With little tricks left in his sleeve, Toriyama has been practicing on various character images and he confessed it was a challenging path.
But despite the hardships and the growing burden Toriyama has to shoulder working on a popular series, he is grateful for the experience and announced that he will devote his best working on the next installment. “Dragon Quest XI” is set to release this year and will be available on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo 3DS.
