Dragon Quest :

Dragon Quest is a role-playing game series known in North America as Dragon Warrior until the 2005 release of Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King. The series was published by Enix, which now forms part of Square-Enix and from the first release of the game in the mid-80's the series have sold over 49 million copies.

Common elements of the series' gameplay are those found in most role-playing games. The player and his party visits a town to buy weapons, equipments, and items which allows him to beat monsters with ease. As soon as the player steps out of town, his party becomes vulnerable to random monster encounters. The battle system is menu based and several options are offered to the player, such as attacking the monster with weapons, magic or items and he may even choose to flee from battle. Winning battles is key in improving party stats and gaining more gold for purchases.

The series also features different character classes from which the player may choose to adopt as his party members. The more typical classes include the fighter, paladin, and mage. Each installment, however, featured its own set of classes of characters to choose from.

If the party is defeated, the party loses half of his gold and is revived in the nearest church. The player must then pay the priest to revive his party members. Recently, the series has adopted banks wherein the player may save his gold so that he can minimize his losses on the chance he is defeated in battle. In the earlier installments of the series, a player may resume his progress by entering a password generated by the game. More recently, however, the player may save his game by talking to NPC's which serve such purpose.

There are currently eight Dragon Quest games in the main series, available on most gaming consoles. A ninth installment, Dragon Quest IX: Defenders of the Starry Sky, is currently being developed for the Nintendo DS.