Cultural Impact
Starting in Dragon Quest III, Patty's Pub began to appear in Dragon Quest games. With the release of Dragon Quest IX, this fictional inn became a real-world location: Patty's Pub opened as a tourist destination in Akihabara in Tokyo after Dragon Quest IX's release. The venue provides a meeting location where players can exchange treasure maps and maps where characters who only appear once during normal gameplay can be found. Players often make Akihabara a destination when visiting Tokyo just to get a valuable map.
Dragon Quest has become a cultural phenomenon in Japan. According to Ryutaro Ichimura and Yuji Horii, Dragon Quest has become popular enough that it is used as a common topic for conversation in Japan, and is considered by the Japanese gaming industry as Japan's national game. William Cassidy of GameSpy claims that "the common wisdom is that if you ask someone from Japan to draw 'Slime,' he'll draw the onion-like shape of the weak enemies from the game." There is an urban myth that the release of Dragon Quest III caused a law to be passed in Japan banning the sale of Dragon Quest games or video games in general except on certain days such as weekends or national holidays. When III was released in Japan, over 300 schoolchildren were arrested for truancy while waiting in stores for the game to be released. The rumor claims there was a measurable dip in productivity when a Dragon Quest game was released and although muggings of Dragon Quest titles became so widespread there were hearings in the Japanese Diet, no law was ever passed. However, the Japanese release of every Dragon Quest title continued to be on a Saturday until the release of Dragon Quest X, which was released on Thursday, August 2, 2012. Nevertheless, each new Dragon Quest launch is widely anticipated.
For its 2012 April Fool's Hoax, Google announced a "NES version" of its Google Maps service, which uses graphics and music licensed from Dragon Quest.
Dragon Quest's music has been influential on various sectors of the performing arts. It is the first video game series to receive live-action ballet adaptations, and musical concerts and audio CDs were produced based on the Dragon Quest universe. Since 1987 the series' music is performed annually in concert halls throughout Japan. Early Dragon Quest concerts inspired Nobuo Uematsu's Final Fantasy compositions.
Read more about this topic: Character Classes From The Dragon Quest Series
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