In 1992, my cousin had a NES and my brother and I did not. We already had a Game Boy and we'd seen a NES thanks to a friend from school, but having one in the family elevated our last name above the rest. We weren't mere commoners anymore, we had something to be proud of! Some time after getting the NES, my uncle traveled to the USA and brought my cousin two games. As our cousin described them, one was the coolest thing ever, the other was unplayable. The first one had robots, which automatically made it better, and they were playing baseball no less. The other was unplayable, as in it literally couldn't be played since there was nothing to control. The cool one was Base Wars, the other was Dragon Quest 2.
We lived in different parts of the city and we saw each other on Sundays, holidays and summer vacation, always at our grandparents' house. The weekend right after getting his new games, my cousin brought his NES so we could play together. One look at the games' boxes and I knew my cousin was wrong: such awesomeness couldn't contain a bad game inside. Besides, it had Dragon right there in the title and it was next to the word Warrior and the number two!!! (Had it been the original Akira Toriyama artwork, I would have probably slapped him). On Friday, Dragon Quest 2 was played for all of five minutes (tops!) while my cousin and brother rested from destroying each other at robotic sports. But that was enough to see my cousin was a fool who had never heard of game intros (or at least that's why I think he thought he couldn't control the game... maybe...). They didn't let me take two steps outside of town before we were back to Base Wars.
Having already played Gargoyle's Quest, the overworld looked very familiar, fantastic and inviting. After all, I already recognized Gargoyle's Quest to be the best product of human civilization and I'd already explored every traversable graphic tile in its tiny overworld, so if this game was somewhat similar in at least one aspect, Dragon Quest 2 could only be one thing and that thing was awesome. I knew, however, that my brother and cousin would go out with my grandfather the next morning and that would allow me to Warrior some Dragons around on my own.
On Saturday morning I got out of bed before anyone else in the house, turned on our 80s Crown color TV, changed to channel 3, put Dragon Warrior 2 in the NES, and turned the power ON. My mind went places that morning. New places, and I'm not sure it ever returned. I was 7 at the time but thanks to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons on VHS and the handful of games I'd already played, my English was good enough to make my way through town. Everything felt like a discovery. Having played Gargoyle's Quest, the town and overworld felt familiar, but the rest was like nothing else I'd ever seen. The title screen, the music, the way the story was written, and the game itself. Like a friend from Miiverse so eloquently put it: "That's NoriNori♪ (Well...,It mean My heart dancing with sounds.) It remain in my heart." Now we were talking. Now this is an adventure.
Right after getting out of town,
one Slime appeared. My thoughts on the matter at hand: "Whoa! FIGHT RUN PARRY ITEM. No idea what PARRY is, only a slight idea of what an ITEM is and I don't wanna FIGHT anyone, Slime or otherwise. RUN!" And run I did. The little pacifist that I was tried to run from pretty much every single encounter for the duration of the entire play session. The concept of Experience Points was way beyond my young years, and conflict was already the least of my priorities. After picking one direction to go, I walked and walked, set on exploring as much as I could of that seemingly endless world. I remember reaching a cave where two guards stood, saying something about needing the King's permission to enter, but they were of no use to me so I kept on walking.
But there was no escape. Eventually, of course, I got what was coming to me, inside some far away, dark cave, God knows how far from the first town.
A few hours later my brother and cousin came home and it was back to the boring life where games were about robots playing baseball and fighting each other over first base. Robots had never seemed more uncool to me, and never have ever since. A day later my cousin went back home, taking his NES away and with it any chance of me spending quality time alone with Dragon Quest 2 for many years to come. Every time I went to my cousin's house I would see the game cartridge, looking as inviting as it did that first day. But the poor thing never had a fighting chance against Ninja Gaiden 2 and Base Wars in my cousin's eyes, and it remained unplayed, probably forever. Thinking about all those lonely slimes, waiting for a hero to appear and slaughter them, is a sad, sad thing.
Like so many people in my life over the years, my cousin left the country in 1995 and I never saw him in person again. We talked a couple of times on the phone but nothing relevant could ever come out of a "forced" conversation like that, with the whole family hanging around us as we tried to make out each other's voices over a bad connection. The last time we talked he was already sick but I didn't know to what extent. I wanted to do more than exchange the usual "hello, how you doing?", but it had been more than ten years since we saw each other last. We had gone from 10 years old to over twenty and that kind of time creates a barrier that is hard to cross. We tried to speak and the right words wouldn't come out. When he died, I didn't know exactly how to feel and I didn't cry, as sad and depressing as the whole thing was. It felt like he had died a long time ago and this made me think about and question things that aren't really relevant to this thread.
One afternoon, about a year ago, I randomly decided to play Dragon Quest 2 for the first time in over a decade. The plan was to finally get to the end but I didn't last very long before the controller got all wet, it must have been raining in my room. Either that or I was crying, but I think I was able to hold back most of it anyway; I wasn't alone and no one likes to see other people cry for reasons they themselves don't fully understand and can't begin to explain. When people talk about emotional connection to videogames, like in a recent thread here on this forum, it's usually the story or characters that they talk about, or a certain cutscene created for that purpose. I don't know much about the story in Dragon Quest 2 and I have no idea what the characters are even called. I have actually never beaten the game. And yet, I can't get past the BEGIN A NEW QUEST screen without thinking about how much I miss my cousin and how grateful I am to my family for the childhood I had.
Do you think Horii, Sugiyama and Toriyama know that what they were making together in 1987 in Japan was actually loneliness?
Music Samples:
Distant Journey /
My Road My Journey /
All Hope is Lost /
Only Lonely Boy /
Only Lonely Boy (vocal version performed by Meine Meinung, video)
