Dragon Warrior I & II

Dragon Warrior I & II for the Game Boy Color was originally published in Japan on September 23, 1999 as Dragon Quest I & II. It was then localized in English for publication in the North American market on September 27, 2000.

It is a single game cartridge compiling Dragon Quest I and Dragon Quest II from the Dragon Quest series. Both of the games collected here were originally developed and published for the Famicom (known internationally as the Nintendo Entertainment System) and later ported to MSX computers.

The Game Boy Color remake was based on an earlier Dragon Quest I & II remake for the Super Famicom (SFC, the Japanese version of the Super NES), which was marketed exclusively in Japan in December 1993, due to the closure of Enix America Corporation, but was since unofficially translated into English in 2002. This game was given upgrades based on the Dragon Quest V game engine, which was released in 1992. The Super Famicom remake is the first such remake of any Dragon Quest game on a different console, with enhancements. This paved the way for many future updates for other games in this series.

Gameplay
Both games feature a Top-down perspective world map where players can move the party between different locations, each represented by a specific sprite. Random battles occur on the world map and in dungeons and are fought in a first person perspective. The battles are fought in Turn-based attacks. Dragon Warrior allows the player to control a single character, whereas Dragon Warrior II features a party of three characters.

Changes from the original games


This remake included many changes from the original NES localizations of the games. The graphics were updated, a new opening sequences and scenes that were not in the NES titles were added to both games, the script was redone, many of the towns and NPCs were renamed to better reflect the original, and features from later games in the series (such as the vault) were added.

Reception and legacy
This was the first remake of any Dragon Quest game released in North America, under the Dragon Warrior name. It received fairly high marks, including a 8.0 out of 10 from IGN, a 9.6 out of 10 from GameSpot, and 8 out of 10 from Nintendo Power. It also received the RPGamer's GameBoy Color Award of the Year for 2000.

Together, both versions of the game sold in excess of 1.94 million copies worldwide. With the success of this game, Enix next went on to release Dragon Warrior III for Game Boy Color in 2001, which again was based on a previous unreleased Super Famicom update of the original Famicom Dragon Quest III.