/vr/ - Retro Games

dragon quest was the first RPG to target kids, that was part of its early appeal in japan. It had A popular shonen jump artist doing character designs and cover art, and the story featured a young hero. Gameplay was simple and very casual friendly.

Up until that point RPGs were very western focused with older heroes (often Conan style warriors), a more strict following of D&D "rules", and they were on personal computers and targeted much older and experienced players. Japanese had foreign ports of ultima, wizardry, and black onyx, but none of these were kid friendly games. Black onyx was the first hit RPG in japan on the MSX, at 150,000 copies, but again that was an older audience.

Druaga was an adventure game, but it felt way more "japanese" than the western ports. Dragon quest took the druaga asthetic and paired it with somewhat simplified western RPG mechanics. Hydlide tried to do this too but it remained a pseudo action RPG with dogshit mechanics. Dragon quest was just the perfect mix of shounen art, simple stoy, basic mechanics, and the perfect 'babbys first RPG" for Japan at the time.