Dragon Warrior Monsters

Dragon Warrior Monsters lets you collect a bunch of those Dragon Warrior monsters and hybridize them into horribly broken killing machines.

Debug Mode


A debug mode can be activated in all versions by using the GameShark code or Game Genie code.

Turning on the code actually opens the skill animation test submenu. To access the main debug menu properly you must press B, turn off the code, and press A - this exits you out of the submenu without causing a freeze, and you'll now be in the GOTO PROGRAM menu. Do whatever you want in here, or press B again to exit to the main Debug Mode menu.

Overall, debug mode is a bit unstable and several options don't seem to work quite as intended.

1:GOTO PROGRAM
This glitchy-looking menu houses a few different options for testing various unrelated things, such as viewing battle animations, looking at monster walksprites, watching battle tutorials, and playing the staff roll. Some of the names of options aren't properly referenced in the English version, and take their text from the wrong strings. The Japanese and German versions don't have the character-scrambling issues with some of the submenus that the English version does.

TITLE ~1 just kicks you back to the title screen. GAME sticks you back ingame, but without any party members or monsters! BATTLE brings you into a randomized battle using your current party. EVTDEMO shows a cutscene of watching falling stars. ENEMY (meant to be STAFF) is the staff roll, which kicks you back to the intro of the game after it's completed, where Terry and Milayou are in their beds.

EFFECT brings up the glitchy-looking skill animation tester. If you can navigate the options properly, you can choose an enemy monster and watch what it looks like when various skills are used on it. The top option seems to be different sorts of slowly-animated screen effects, such as shaking and blackouts (navigate with right-left and press A to view.) The bottom options are skill animation (navigate ID numbers with right-left and press A to view), enemy view toggle (right-left to toggle), and enemy species (right-left to go through IDs.)

MONSTR1 (meant to be RESULT) shows a You Win! screen and kicks you back to the main game menu. DEBUG ~2 goes to the main Debug Mode menu. The second MONSTR1 (meant to be OBJTEST) shows monster walksprites, on a glitchy background. You can choose one of two options, the top lets you turn the monster around with the dpad until you press B and the bottom lets you change the displayed monster species (000-214). Exiting out of the sprite viewer resets the game.

NO MORE. initiates a tutorial with a WhiteKing who introduces himself as "Grandpa Sakamoto" and explains what each menu option does in a battle, then resets the game. MONSTR2L shows another similar tutorial. These tutorials are apparently exclusive to the debug mode, and are never seen ingame.

Every option afterward appears to freeze or crash.

PRGNO1, PRGNO2, and PRGNO3 seem to be some sort of variables for each option, but their purpose is unknown.

2:MONSTER
Just lets you view the big monster sprites, along with their names.

3:GAME EDIT
This is sort of two menus in one. Depending on what you set as MAPTYPE, you can either teleport yourself to any regular map (NORMAL) or test a randomly-generated dungeon (ACREATE). With MAPTYPE set to NORMAL, the FLOOR option lets you choose between the available areas by name. When it's set to ACREATE, FLOOR chooses which scenario you're dumped into (eg the dungeon that ends in seeing a princess and Dragon, or the FaceTree forest, or the MadCat dungeon, etc.)

The next two options seem broken - ALLY is probably supposed to let you set the number of party members you have, from 00-03, but it seems to default to zero if you aren't using the DEBUG option as well. MONSTR1-3 is probably supposed to let you choose the monster types that will appear in a dungeon but it doesn't seem to work, and sometimes instead fills the dungeon with Watabou and/or Slimes. DUMMY's function is unknown.

Setting DEBUG to anything besides 00 has an interesting effect - your party and farm will be filled with randomized monsters (species / level / nickname / wildness / parents are all random for each), your name will be changed, your inventory will consist of nine random items, and you'll be given 87040 gold.

Pressing Start will save the selections you made here and put you back into the main game with your choices applied.

4:SOUND TEST
Exactly as labeled. Lets you listen to any music or sound effect in the game.

5:BATTLE EDIT
Lets you set up a test battle. ENEMY lets you set 000-002 enemies (1-3). The way monster selection here works is pretty awkward. The first of each MONSTER pairs determines the enemy's species. The second of each pair sort of determines what your party members' species are? Maybe? This part is really hard to understand. Either way, your party is very random and the debug effects used in the GAME EDIT menu seem to apply here (given a bunch of items, money, etc.) DUMMY seems to not do anything. If you lose the battle you show up in front of the king of GreatTree, if you win you just appear wherever you were ingame prior to battle testing.

- RETURN -
Restarts the game.

Regional differences
The Japanese, German, and English versions of the game all have different intro and title screens. The Japanese version starts off showing the Dragon Quest series' logo in red, then replaces it with a fancy blue Dragon Quest Monsters logo overlaid in katakana. The German version keeps the Dragon Quest name and logo, but swaps the intro/title colors and just adds "MONSTERS" as a subtitle along with the copyright info. The English version keeps the color changes but replaces the Dragon Quest logo with a Dragon Warrior one, also replacing the ™ with a ®.

Unused Super Game Boy Function
PAL_PRI. When bit set to automatically switches to the custom software's palette if any palette or attribute settings are altered. Super Game Boy palettes are disabled, ergo the command is unused. TOSE could have originally intended to simply have the palettes switch back as done with Donkey Kong Land and other games. Game Genie code will enable palette selection.