Growing up with video games being as commonplace as media like books or TV, a lot of video games I played in my youth hold special importance to me, and are linked to various memories and emotions. The games I never completed as a kid can have an unfinished importance, which sometimes leads to attempts to complete them at various times in my life.
Dragon Warrior II, or Dragon Quest II, was definitely one of those games that has always held special importance, and this is for many reasons. My older brother and I played RPGs. It is what we did. When I was 5 years old in 1989, we went to a neighborhood kid’s house who had a Nintendo. At this time, we did not yet have one. We played games like Super Mario Bros here, but I remember one day when we entered the room with the kid’s TV for video games, and saw all the kids’ eyes glued to the TV. They were playing a very different game. This was Dragon Warrior. Everyone was 7. My brother was considered to be the smart one, and so as no one could make any sense of the game, he was given the controller. The kids thought in battles you have to hit A as fast as you can. I don’t think it is that the kids couldn’t read, it’s that they didn’t care to and would rather use trial and error for figuring out what to do as opposed to calmly reading what it says on the screen. My brother figured out the controls, read commands of attack or spell or run, and eventually helped them in the game.
We then moved to Haida Gwaii (then called the Queen Charlotte Islands) and back to the suburbs southeast of Vancouver. Our parents for whatever reason bought us a Nintendo. Sometimes on the weekends, our mom would take us to the video game rental shop, and we would rent a game. My older brother had strong memories of Dragon Warrior, and when we saw Dragon Warrior II, he got excited, and as I was a little brother, his excitement made me excited.
I’m not sure how much I “got” Dragon Warrior II at this age. I was about 7 at this age, and had already beaten Final Fantasy (as well as a WarMech, which you- the reader- should be impressed about), but I am not sure about how much of the text I could actually read. However, we progressed in the game.
Dragon Warrior II is an RPG, or what is now usually called a jRPG (the “j” stands for “Japanese”). It’s not called Dragon Warrior II anymore and it may even have a subtitle after its name, like the Japanese game did. The “real name” of the game has always been Dragon Quest, and it was changed due to copyright issues or something in North America. The Japanese subtitle and the reasons for the difference of names are interesting, but not important.
It improved on Dragon Warrior I by having multiple characters in your party, being able to fight multiple enemies at the same time, and by having a ship that you could sail in. It got rid of torches (to light up caves, they were now automatically lit), had keys you could use more than once, and was really fucking hard. It also had some really rocking tunes. It wasn’t popular at all, and I didn’t know any other kids who were into the game besides me and my older brother. It was ours to like, or that’s how I felt.
Part of the game is finding these 5 crests. The grandson of the last boss of the first game tells you that you need them to fight Hargon. Hargon’s the bad guy in this game. So then you go out and look for 5 crests. I was one day randomly searching the ground on a small map of a shrine that had warps to different areas, and I found a crest. One day, we were looking for sunken treasure, which was right beside a single tile on the world map. A shoal. (I only know the word shoal from Dragon Warrior.) We searched the world map for hours, sailing in the sea, fighting Sea Slugs and Man O Wars among other monsters. We found it and were very happy. Then there was a power outage, and our progress was lost. Later the game had to be returned. Near the beginning of the game, you learn that a character has turned into a mutt, and that your Mirror of Ra can transform them back (into a princess). We didn’t know what a mutt was. When we eventually looked it up in the dictionary, we were ecstatic, and we knew exactly which mutt to use our Mirror of Ra in front of.
Renting the game at the store was always a risk. This was the same with later games we played mainly through renting them, but the memories were especially strong with Dragon Warrior II (and for some reason, the critically hated Tecmo’s Secret of the Stars). There would always be different save files, and they would always be at different parts of the game. They would never be at the end of the game. The game was hard, and people didn’t beat the game. I pieced the story in my head backwards sometimes. My brother and I took turns, and I think he had his own file, and I got bored of that and went on other files. When we rented the game again, we had always hoped that our file (well, his file) was on it. There were multiple copies at the store and it was impossible to know which one it was on. If we didn’t get it, that was alright, but if we got the right copy, and our (his) file was erased, then that sucked.
One day we went to the rental store, and right beside Dragon Warrior II we saw Dragon Warrior III. We got that one instead. After we got a paper route, we had wanted to buy Dragon Warrior II, but could not find it for sale anywhere. Every store we went to, we would always look for it, and never find it. We were able to beat Dragon Warrior III (but we didn’t buy it), and we were able to buy Dragon Warrior IV.
When I was in high school, the Internet became a thing, and I learned about ROMs. By this time, my memories were not with Dragon Warrior II, but I think my brother’s were, and he would play Dragon Warrior II at this time. I would play Final Fantasy V. This was our “generation gap” of two years.
Dragon Warrior I and II came out for Gameboy Color in 2000, and I bought it. I don’t remember playing I, but I played II, and for the first time I truly understood the story. It is very different playing a game where you understand everything, or have the patience to understand everything. Where the sunken treasure was was properly explained. The crest I found randomly had its location told by someone. Everything made sense. I didn’t finish the game at this time. I think I just got sick of it after a while. Perhaps I didn’t know what to do after I got a few crests. Perhaps when you’re 17 you don’t want to play Dragon Warrior II in your basement. Perhaps you do.
My older brother had beaten the game (the NES version) using save states on the computer. The final area of the game (called Rhone) was especially tough, and really there was no other way to go through it unless you did use save states. (A save state is saving the game at any time, and not at an in-game save point.)
I would later buy Dragon Warrior III on GBC and go on to beat it, heartily enjoying myself with it.
No one in North America bought Dragon Warrior I and II or Dragon Warrior III for the Gameboy Color. They sold only one copy of each, and those were both to me.
In the next few years the copyright for the title Dragon Quest opened up in North America, and the company that made Dragon Quest swept in and took it. Dragon Quest could now be known as Dragon Quest in the West. Interesting. Not important.
When I came to Japan, I got a cell phone from the company Vodofone. After I met my now wife, I switched to Docomo. She was on Docomo. I got a high tech high-end phone for the year 2006. A girl I liked in 2004 used the term high tech a lot. The Docomo phone could play Dragon Quest II, and despite not knowing much Japanese, I bought it (or I believe rented it for 300 yen a month, something I continued to pay long after I gave up on it). I gave up on it perhaps 10 minutes after starting it.
In 2014 (that’s almost 10 years later!) I downloaded the Dragon Quest app on the iPhone. It came with Dragon Quest for free if you were one of the first X people to download it. I tried the Dragon Quest game, and I hated the graphics and hated it and never wanted to play it again. (I’m playing it now, in October of 2015.) Perhaps drunk one night with 300 yen on my Apple account, I bought Dragon Quest II. I got bored before the long 2-minute intro cut scene ended. I didn’t play it.
In August of 2015, I bought Dragon Quest VIII on the 3DS. I played it on the trains when I could sit down, which was most of the time honestly. The 3D-ness of it all would sometimes make me dizzy, and I sometimes found it cumbersome to talk to the right person to trigger the next person of the story. One day in September I was standing on the train, but wanted to still play some Dragon Quest. The iOS games can be played with one hand, and that is exactly what I did, I played Dragon Quest II. I traversed towns and castles, found my cousins, the five crests, the Eye of Hargon, went through the Cave to Rhone, into Hargon’s Castle and saved the world. It’s important to note that the iOS version, based on the Japan-exclusive Super Famicom version, was a lot easier than the Nintendo version that my older brother beat years earlier with save states.
I sometimes imagine if I would have beaten it when I was 7 years old. I don’t think the Cave to Rhone can be properly understood or enjoyed unless you’re younger than 10. I did most definitely enjoy playing it on my commutes to and from work on the Sobu line, but there was a magic that wasn’t there, and that’s a magic that only comes with not fully understanding what’s going on, and having hours upon hours to play without thinking about in the back of your head why your boss may be angry with you this time.
I’ve realized it kind of helps to think of Hargon as a rip-off of Sauron. I think that’s the name of the bad guy from Lord of the Rings. I’ve never read the Lord of the Rings books, and got bored halfway through the Hobbit. Perhaps in ten years I’ll read and love them all. Not now though.

Hargon’s power could make people in close by towns sick. Rhone (where Hargon resided) was high in a snowy mountain range. The closest town to Rhone was built completely underground in order to avoid the power of Hargon. The Cave to Rhone is the hardest, longest dungeon in the game. There’s a part where each room has two paths, and one is correct and one brings you back to the beginning of the labyrinth. This is something that is magical for kids, and a pain in the ass for someone who wants to finish the cave before changing trains. I can imagine getting really excited when finally getting to the end of it with my older brother. I can imagine dying again and again and again, for hours upon end with my older brother, ready to try again.

When in Rhone (as an adult), I wondered if the landscapes would actually be beautiful. I think in Lord of the Rings, wherever Sauron is would not be considered beautiful. However, Rhone had a snowy tileset that is only found in Rhone, and many forests and hills (I think the enemy encounter rate is slightly higher in forests and hills). Besides Hargon’s castle, there is a single shrine populated by a priest and a nun in Rhone. This serves as a place that you can cast “Return” (the name of this spell has changed in the last 10 years) to (for easy return), and a place where you can save your game near the end. Regardless, one does have to wonder about the lives of these two people, and how they are not getting ill from Hargon’s presence. Their Godliness must be a factor.

I’m going to spoil the ending of the game now, so you shouldn’t read on if you want to remain pure for it, in case you ever think you need to play through Dragon Quest II.

Hargon is not the final boss. While this probably has become a trope in jRPGs (the main antagonist throughout the entire game not being the final boss), I think it is safe to say that it started here. Malroth, a (the?) God of destruction is the last boss. After reading about Lord of the Rings lore on the train the other day (I think I was interested in the economics of Sauron’s realm, and didn’t want to read the books), it seems that there’s a God of Destruction more powerful than Sauron too. After beating many mini-bosses in Hargon’s Castle, Hargon is actually quite easy, and it is hard to believe that his power has made a town at the foot of Rhone build their entire town underground. Malroth is as powerfull as you would expect a God of Destruction to be. I could imagine beating Malroth at age 7 would make one feel like top shit.

When I beat Malroth (he was called Sidoh in the Japanese version, and if you’re wondering why I put an h at the end, it’s because I believe that’s how it is officially romanized), I was on a busy train sitting down, and looked up with great pride to see fellow zombies wondering why the fuck they are living in Chiba when they work in Shinjuku Ward. There was no applause. I still felt pretty awesome though.

Usually in a jRPG, when the game ends there is an ending cut scene which is your reward for beating the game. Dragon Quest II has you leave Hargon’s (now destroyed) castle, and you are able to go anywhere in the game. There are no more monsters in the game though. All the towns you can visit have people saying things like “hey, no more Hargon, eh? Good job! Thanks!” Finally, when you return to your castle, there is a little cut scene, but it’s not long and annoying.

I’m 31 now, and I highly doubt that I will ever play Dragon Quest II ever again. I have finally beaten it after all, and I don’t think it’s the type of game that you would want to play again and again. The strongest memory of Dragon Quest II will remain the constant search of it as a child, forever going into used game shops and looking for a copy. It is a bit of an awkward game for its difficulty, and people on the (English-speaking) Internet do not look back at it fondly. It was a part of my life for a long time though, and therefore I look back on the game, and the memories I have with it fondly.