Dragon Warrior

Dragon Warrior was released in Japan as Dragon Quest, and sparked a long line of popular games...at least over there. It took a while elsewhere, and Europe tended to get screwed over.

Town Overworld Tile


An overworld tile for a castle that strangely goes unused.

Title Screen
First and foremost, the name alteration: while called Dragon Quest in Japan, in America there were some trademark issues over that name; as a result, the American releases began as Dragon Warrior.

Dragon Quest has the logo on a solid-color background, while Dragon Warrior has a more generic logo on a somewhat more interesting background. It also moves all the options to menus following the title screen.

Saving
While Dragon Quest used a password-based system, Nintendo replaced it with a battery-backed SRAM system.

Sprites and Graphics
Dragon Quest used sprites much like older PC RPGs (such as the early Ultima games), in that characters did not face in a particular direction, but instead always face forward. Dragon Warrior uses more space for graphics, so characters are able to face in all directions. (The graphics were given a bit of an upgrade, too.)

Further, when you talk to someone in Dragon Quest, you have to choose a direction first. Due to the new sprites, Dragon Warrior removes the concept and the direction you face is used. (Additionally, in the control menu, the locations of "SEARCH" and "DOOR" {しらべる and とびら, respectively} were switched due to the longer English text.)

The directional differences apply to all mobile NPCs as well:

Further, the additional graphic space allowed for actual coastlines, instead of the somewhat more abrupt water-land transitions of the Japanese release.

Interestingly, some townspeople sprites from the Japanese version are present in the monster graphics of Dragon Warrior, unused.

Revisional Differences
The two American releases are mostly the same, minus two text changes.

The title screen corrected an error, changing "to" to "of" in the PRG1 version.

The battle damage was changed from "Hits" to "Hit Points".