 Dragon Quest It's one of the most famous game series in Japan. Over 30 years old with 11 number titles and countless spin-offs. There's Dragon Quest Monsters, Dragon Quest Heroes, Dragon Quest The Musical, a Dragon Quest themed restaurant, a Dragon Quest amusement park. There's a lot of Dragon Quest to experience out there. It's a cultural phenomenon and it all started with one game. I've been making Dragon Quest videos here on YouTube for a while now. If you're watching this, chances are you're already a fan of DQ. If not, no worries, I have plenty of videos on how to get into the franchise that you should definitely check out sometime. Most may not know this, but there's quite a hidden side to Dragon Quest, an iceberg that keeps going deeper. I've been a fan of the series for years, investigating every aspect of every game, the development, history, hidden trivia and more. I figured I have the knowledge to do a video like this. So for today's video, we will be exploring the Dragon Quest Iceberg and I will show you just how deep it goes. Let's start with the low hanging fruit of Dragon Quest conspiracy theories. If you've heard of Dragon Quest, chances are you've heard that the game was such a huge hit that thousands of people across Japan skipped school and worked just to get it, causing mass panic across the country, making the Japanese government mandate that Dragon Quest only ever be sold on weekends to prevent this from ever happening again. Imagine that, an actual law that prevents a specific company to release their game on a certain day of the week. This is almost too crazy to be a true story. Well, it is. You see, there is no Dragon Quest law. This is a widely circulated urban myth, and it wasn't the first Dragon Quest game that caused this myth either. It was Dragon Quest III, which was where the series hit new highs in popularity. Believe it or not, Dragon Quest I actually didn't do that well during its first release month. It actually sold really badly at first, mostly due to Japanese gamers not knowing what a JRPG even was, since it didn't even exist at the time. But eventually, the franchise started to gain traction, resulting in the insane popularity that the franchise has, with dedicated fans waiting in lines that stretch over blocks whenever a new entry in the franchise is released. It got so bad that fans were skipping both work and school just to play the game. To avoid future controversy, Enix took it upon themselves to release future games on Saturdays instead of Thursdays like most other game releases, since schools aren't open on weekends and a lot of people didn't have work. The first Dragon Quest game is an adventure chock full of secrets. In Dragon Quest I, when you get to the final boss, the Dragon Lord, you actually talk to him a bit before the final confrontation. He offers you half of the world if you decide to join forces with him. Obviously, being a hero, we would never do that. Hey, what are you doing? Okay, so if you say yes, you get stuck on an ominous game over screen in the NES version of the game. In the Game Boy version, you wake up in a nearby inn with it all just being a dream. It's weird that this isn't even in the game considering that choosing this option makes potential hours of exploring the Dragon Lord's castle just to get to him completely worthless. If you choose to side with him, you don't beat the game and you just wasted hours of your life. Serves you right, I guess. The main character of Dragon Quest III is Australian. I'm serious. The crowned boy you might recognize from Smash Bros. who is also the hero of the third game is from Aliahan. At the beginning of Dragon Quest III, your mother calls out to you saying Kui, which is a shout almost exclusively used in Australia. Also, Dragon Quest III's map resembles the real world with locations based on Japan, South America, Africa, and more. The hero's hometown in Aliahan appears to be right where Australia should be, giving more credibility to this. So yeah, he's Australian. In Dragon Quest III, you can't name your character Erdrick. Go ahead. Try it. Boot it up and try naming him Erdrick. You can't. It will not work. The reason why is because in Dragon Quest, Erdrick is a title that you have to earn by being considered a true hero. It's not something you can just name yourself willy-nilly. You gotta earn it. In the same game, if you go to Patty's Pub where you make your own characters, if you try creating a new character and name him Erdrick, it still won't work. This time, the guy behind the counter will start freaking out and tell you you can't choose that name for whatever reason. Holy shit, calm down. Some of the weapons in Armor and Dragon Quest have strange writing on them. These are actually runes, and they translate to secret messages hidden on the items. They were added to the designs by Jun Tamaya, the man who designed most of the armor and weapons throughout the series. He worked at Gainax at the time. The famous anime studio that would eventually make Neon Genesis Evangelion and Gurren Lagann. By the time, they used to be a sort of toy company that made these model kits. Back then, they were called General Products, and during his time there, Tamasan designed many iconic Dragon Quest weapons in Armor, including Erdrick's sword and the Zenithian sword. These weapons eventually made their way into the series canon, showing up in the game guides and eventually the official artworks. Anyway, back to the writing on the weapons. By using the cipher that Tamasan used during the creation of these swords, we can actually decode a lot of DQ weapons armor and items. And they actually spell something out if you do this. Erdrick's sword literally has the word Dragon Quest across the blade. That's right, the words on his sword just say Dragon Quest. The circle on the Zenithian sword says Michibika Reshimono, which in Japanese means Guided Person, or the Chosen one, fitting well into DQ Force theme chapters of the Chosen. Erdrick's shield is easy, it says Roto on it, and Ra's mirror says it's your face, you believe it or not. So they put so much detail into these early items, going as far as hiding secret messages that can only be decoded by those who know how. That's really cool. In Dragon Quest IV, there's a priest character named Kirill, who accompanies you on your journey. He's become somewhat of a running joke in the fandom. You see, DQ IV on the NES was the first game in the series to include party AI where your party members would attack on their own. And there's a spell in the game that Kirill can learn called Whack, which has a very low chance of insta killing the enemy. This resulted in a strange phenomenon where Kirill would constantly cast the Whack spell on enemies because how powerful it is, not taking into account the low hit rate, resulting in this useless moron character who keeps casting Whack every single turn within missing every time. And in the original DQ IV, you couldn't even turn off the AI, so it wasn't even a bigger problem, you were stuck with him acting like this. DQ IV's remake for the DS tweaked the AI heavily, as Yuji Horii discussed in an interview in Nintendo Power. Though at this point, the team realized that constantly casting Whack had become somewhat of a personality trait for Kirill. So they decided to make him cast Whack every once in a while, but not as much, just to say true to the character. His constant failed attempts of casting Whack are even referenced in DQ Heroes. In DQ III, you can choose from a number of different classes for your party members. Warriors, Thieves, Mages, and other useful vocations. However, one class out of these is very bizarre in its purpose. The Goofah for the Gatabot class. This is a literal clown character that constantly misses his attacks, sometimes doesn't even bother to attack, has low stats aside from luck, and just overall sucks tremendous ass. Why would anyone want to use this character? Well, when you get him to level 20 somehow and you change his class at Ultra Zabi, it turns out that the Gatabot is the only class that can change into the ultra-powerful Sage class without a special book. The Sage class is a powerful cross between a mage and a priest, with both healing and offensive attacks at their disposal, making for an extremely useful character, though you have to drag along the most useless character in order to get the most useful characters so I guess it evens out. Some bosses have had changes to the design based on merchandise and other out of game appearances. Zoma, the final boss from DQ III is typically shown with four fingers per hand in early illustrations as an indicator of his demonic origins. He has four fingers in his arc by Toriyama and his initial sprites, however later on he would be primarily shown with five fingers in mainline games such as DQ IX, DQ III for Switch, DQ Heroes, and various kinds of merchandise. The reasoning why has never been stated, but in Japan it has become somewhat of a taboo for characters to have four fingers due to a connection to the Yakuza, so this can explain why. Maloroth and a story from Dragon Quest II was shown as green in his first appearance as well as all other mainline entries, however in spin-off titles he is blue for some reason. He appears blue in almost every spin-off title where he appears except for DQ Builders II where he is green, possibly due to the strong connection between Builders and the mainline games. Dragon Quest V, it started out on a Super Famicom, then was remade on the DS, then it was ported to mobile phones. But did you know that randomly after years of being on mobile devices Square Enix decided to update it? Yeah, in July 2019, version 1.1.0 was released, adding support for iPhone X and it added the monster magnet as a casino prize. This is nearly four years after the release of the game, so came as quite a surprise. The item increases the hero's defense by five and increases the chance of a monster joining the hero's party by a lot, being a very useful item if players are trying to get a liquid metal slime to join them. This item was initially a limited time item in Japan at launch, so it's nice that they added it permanently worldwide. Kiefer in Dragon Quest VII is the Royal Prince of Astard and the son of King Burns in the PS1 version. The 3DS remake however changed a few things around, including the name of King Burns. This time, instead of being called King Burns, he is called King Donald. This is clearly supposed to be a reference to Donald and Kiefer Sutherland, the father-son actors, which is a nice nod they added in the localization. In Dragon Quest XI, early on you meet Eric in the Castle Dungeon and the two of you make your grand escape. During the breakout, the two of you run into a black dragon sleeping under the castle who then gives chase, but have you ever wondered what would happen if you stopped running and decided to face the dragon? Well as it turns out, you end up in a fight with the dragon and being under level 5 at the time, you have no hope to beat it, so you will most likely get your ass handed to you. However, if you somehow grind levels high enough and manage to defeat the dragon, which is highly unlikely, you will actually be treated to a special scene where Eric and the hero defeat the dragon and walk out of the cave peacefully. It's almost inconceivable for players to beat the dragon this early on in the game, but the developers put this scene in the game anyway just in case they do. That's the kind of attention to detail in developer force site that really makes me appreciate Dragon Quest XI. In the Game Boy remake of Dragon Quest I, the first town you visit is Tentagill. In this town, there's a random lady walking around who, upon talking to her, becomes quite smitten with the hero and chooses to follow you around. This has seemingly no purpose, she doesn't fight with you or give you anything, when you leave town she stops following you, so why in the world will they even put this in the game? Well, what some eagle-eyed players might realize however, is that there's a secret scene that occurs if you take her to the inn and stay there for the night. You see, when you stay at the inn, normally you get the little in-jungle and when you wake up the innkeeper says, good morning and have a nice day. However, if you stay at the inn while the lady is following you, he says, good morning, you are up late, with some very obvious implications. This easter egg is even in the Japanese version of the remake as well. Unfortunately, the Switch version of Dragon Quest 1 removed this easter egg. The lady is still in the game, but if you take her to the inn, you just get the regular message. Obviously, that little easter egg is going way too far. That's one reason why I don't really like the Switch remakes very much. Continuing with Dragon Quest 1, throughout the game the player is sent traveling all over the world to complete various tasks, with the main quest having to save the princess and beat the dragon lord. The princess is hidden in the cave to the east, and the dragon lord is located at the top of his castle to the south. So there are two different locations, and saving the princess gives you a big hint on where to find Erdrick's token. However, you can actually skip over this part and just defeat the dragon lord if you want. The ending is changed if you do this additionally. There's several different endings in DQ1. The first is where you save the princess and then defeat the dragon lord, which gives you the normal ending where the princess comes down the castle stairs to ask to go with you to expand your kingdom. The second ending is where you save the princess, then head straight to the dragon lord while holding her arms. Defeating him and taking her back to the castle will give you a similar ending except she doesn't walk down the stairs. Finally, if you defeat the dragon lord without ever finding the princess, you get the same ending, except this time there is no princess in the castle, so she doesn't ask to go with you, and the king and townspeople don't seem to care about her either, isn't that nice? In the remake of DQ1, they added a very interesting element to Erdrick's tomb in Alifgaard. When you read Erdrick's final message to his senate, it is written out in plain English, while everyone else in Alifgaard speaks in this ye old English style with plenty of vows and thuses. The reason why is just another example of close attention to detail. Erdrick is originally from the world above where they speak plain modern English, so it wouldn't make sense for him to write his final message in the old English style. Now, the NES versions of the original DQ games were no stranger to changing things around for western audiences. We've gotten changes such as sprites being approved from the original to being able to look in four directions rather than just looking one way. A lot of religious symbolism was removed too, such as crosses, priests, and even coffins, which were replaced by non-religious alternatives. Extra graphics were also added making things a bit fancier. This is especially shown in Dragon Ward 2, which featured a brand new opening scene showing the descendants of Erdrick walking towards the screen, which is a very cool addition, and even the ending card has a custom graphic. Probably one of the most fascinating changes, however, lies in the North American Dragon Warrior 3, which features a new opening title with a mysterious title song that isn't in the original. This theme is not in the Japanese version of the game, and as far as I can tell, it wasn't made by Sugiyama and seems to have been made specifically for the North American version. But we have no idea who composed the theme. It is completely a mystery. No leads have popped up as of now. Who knows if we will ever find out? I hope we will, but only time will tell. Speaking of title theme songs, most Dragon Quest games have a song called Intermezzo, which plays when you're selecting your save file. Almost every mainline Dragon Quest game uses the same jangle for when you're selecting your save file or making a new save file. All of them except for Dragon Quest 2, which interestingly uses a different song called Only Lonely Boy. This was originally a pop song that Koichi Sugiyama wrote that was performed by Japanese pop star Anna Makino, and they used it for Dragon Quest 2. And that was the only time in the main series that a different song was used. From Dragon Quest 3 onwards, they went back to using the Intermezzo for the save select. Only Lonely Boy did make a return to the menu of Dragon Quest Builders 2, most likely due to the connection to Dragon Quest 2. It's a nice little touch for longtime fans. In Dragon Quest 7 for the 3DS, eventually Kiefer leaves your party to follow his own dreams, never to return. Therefore, most players wouldn't know that if you somehow got Kiefer to level 50, he becomes Super Kiefer. At level 50, regardless of what his stats look like, his resilience will shoot up to 660. This is high enough, making him practically invincible to enemy attacks, taking little to no damage from all the enemies. Most players will never discover this because he leaves your party so much earlier than level 50. You'd have to grind for hours and hours and hours to discover the secret. And unfortunately, because he leaves your party so early, you can't really take advantage of Super Kiefer later on in the game. It's a very interesting secret hidden in the game, and they probably added it because they want to reward your commitment to leveling up Kiefer before he makes the world tree and leaves. In Dragon Quest 8, the main character has a mysterious origin that isn't revealed until the post game. After the credits roll, you go back to his homeland and find out that he is a Dragovian, part of a race of half-human half-dragons, making him the closest thing to a dragon warrior that the series has ever seen. While this may seem like it came out of the left field, there's actually a lot of foreshadowing towards it in early on in the game, particularly when you get to the first dungeon, the Waterfall Cave. If instead of going in the cave, you instead follow the trail behind it to get to the top of the hill, you'll find a hut with a mysterious old man who appears to know about the hero and Munchie's true nature, and he hints at Munchie being no ordinary mouse. He's actually a Dragovian, and he reveals it to you after you get to the Dragovian Village. Additionally, another bit of foreshadowing appears in the cave itself when you fight the first boss, Geyser. Geyser unleashes a cursed mist as one of his attacks, and while it'll affect Yangus, the curse evaporates before hitting the hero, and you even see the Dragovian's symbol flash in front of him, which is some cool foreshadowing. The hero is curse resistant due to his nature as a Dragovian, and throughout the game he will be the only member of the party who cannot be cursed no matter what, even being able to equip cursed items no problem, and these bits of foreshadowing all happen within the first hour of the game, which is especially cool as most people wouldn't even notice it. I certainly didn't. Dragon Quest IX We all know this Diaz Exclusive Dragon Quest game. It's one of the most popular games in the franchise. But did you know that when the game was first announced at 2006 Tokyo Game Show, we saw a trailer that looked very different from the final game. The graphics and menu looked different than the final product, but more importantly, the game was in turn based. You could clearly see players attacking a boss enemy in an action RPG style combat system. No transition from overall to fights or turns. They were really planning on making a mainline Dragon Quest game with action combat. Well, something must have happened because the game was soon delayed from its projected 2007 release to a 2009 release. Two whole years of extra development time, and the final product looked a lot different going back to the series classic turn based style. Maybe it was the fan outcry, or the devs thought it wasn't such a great idea after all. In any case, this change may have caused the game to be delayed, and is why we have the Dragon Quest IX of today. Speaking of Dragon Quest IX, it should be mentioned that this game has its own share of urban legends. In DQ9, there are procedurally generated dungeons you can discover via treasure maps. The dungeons are made via an algorithm resulting in millions of different combinations, with each dungeon having a unique name along with the name of the player who discovered it. Through what the game calls tag mode, two players can connect to each other's DSs and exchange popular dungeon maps. This quickly made many maps travel their way around the world, which is an amazing feature and demonstrates how games can work in modern times. One such map will go on to become the most famous grotto map in the world. This map is the Masayuki map. I've talked about it before in previous videos. It originated in Japan. The map's random name is the Ruby Path of Doom, but it is more commonly known by the guy who found it, Masayuki. This map is famous because on its final floor, it spawns nothing but metal king slimes, so everyone who plays DQ9 would want this map to grind faster. The map spread far due to its popularity and eventually made its way westward. I even have it on my cartridge. And speaking of cartridges, there is yet another DQ9 urban legend I want to go over. So when DQ9 was coming out, it was being toted as this grand RPG that would push the DS to its very limits, and it did. The game ended up taking 256 megabytes of space, which was massive for a DS game at the time. Around the time DQ9 was releasing, a viral image started circulating around the internet showing a dual cartridge case for DQ9 with two DS cartridges, making starry-eyed fans like myself think that the game would be so huge that it could only fit on two carts, kind of like the multi-disc games on the PlayStation 1. I myself saw this image, and I was actually fooled by it as well as many other people who were anticipating the game at the time. It is definitely one of the most interesting hoaxes that the Dragon Quest fans have been faced with, and it really hyped up the game for me thinking that it would be that big. So earlier we talked about Dragon Quest 1's secret ending where you don't save the princess. That one is pretty well known, however a lesser known ending is the secret ending of Dragon Quest 2. So in DQ2, eventually you'll get to a point where the Prince of Kanak gets sick, and you and the princess of Moonbrook need to travel to Yggdrasil to get a leaf that will heal him. In the meantime, he'll be bedridden in the town of Beiran. Now of course you can save him, but what if you just ignore him and go beat Hargon and Maloroth without him, just you and the princess? First of all, this will make the final boss extremely difficult. It's already excruciatingly difficult, but imagine trying to do it with only two people. Well, you may be surprised to know that this is still entirely possible with enough grinding and skill, and if you beat the final boss without the Prince of Kanak, you can get multiple special endings. There's one where you return to pick him up after being the final boss, where he acts disappointed that you did it without him, and another where you go straight to the King of Middenhall without him, where he catches up with you out of breath and seems ticked off that you love without him. Really interesting that they hid these scenes in the game. It shows that they've really thought of everything, and this is just another example of how clever the Dragon Quest team really is. Speaking of Dragon Quest II's endings, did you know that Yuji Hori was originally going to include another alternate ending that ended up being scrapped? In a 1987 interview, Hori tells it all. Supposedly, they originally planned it so that during the final battle, the Prince of Kanak would sacrifice himself and perish, leaving you and the Princess of Moonbrook to have to return to home without him, wishing him peace in the next life. During the ceremony celebrating Hargon's defeat, they were planning on having the Princess of Kanak come out of a crowd and stab you for killing her brother. They scrapped this ending because it was too sad. Well, it definitely would have been a bizarre ending, maybe that was a good call. Before we move on from Dragon Quest II, I also want to mention that there's some cut content from pre-production that never made it into the final game due to memory limitations. Originally, the game was going to have these big cutscene images like this one that appears in the game manual, but were unfortunately scrapped. We would have seen a large landscape image from the top of the lighthouse with hints of where to go next as well. Additionally, entire parts of the map were rearranged, causing the game to be delayed for months. You can see Kanak Castle in a different location in an early beta screen on the back of the official vinyl record soundtrack. Another thing that was scrapped was the dangerous swimsuit that the Princess of Moonbrook was supposed to be able to equip. It was supposed to be a very strong and very expensive armor piece that would actually change the Princess's sprite to make her wear it. While we didn't get in the NES version of the game, the MSX version has it included in a hidden scene. In the MSX DQ2, if you talk to the King of Tantago while the Princess of Moonbrook isn't wearing anything, he'll comment something like, whoa, the girl behind you isn't even wearing cotton clothes. It's pitiful that someone so cute doesn't have anything to wear. And he'll then give you the swimsuit with a special scene showing her wearing it. This makes the MSX version of DQ2 the best version of the game obviously because of the added content. This swimsuit will end up making it into DQ3, changing the female party member's sprite to wear it as its original intention. So moving on from DQ2 finally, there are some interesting hidden scenes in DQ8 as well. In the first town of Fairbury, you're asked by a young woman named Valentina to go on a quest to find a new crystal ball for her father, the fortune teller called the Russia. And of course you're given the choice to say yes or no to a request. Unlike most RPGs that put you through in a constant loop if you say no, in this scene if you refuse, she'll be disappointed and you can actually leave. Now most people would just talk to her again except the quest, but not me. When I was a kid and I first played this game, I wanted to see what would happen if you left the town after saying no to her. If you report back to King Trood after refusing, he yells at you and calls you an imbecile. I guess we deserve that. There's another hidden scene that you can find later on. Later on in the game, you find yourself given a quest by Yangus' childhood friend Red to find a jewel called the Venus Tear, which is hidden deep within a dungeon. Well, as it turns out, there's nothing stopping you from going to the dungeon and getting the tear before meeting Red. If you do this first, then upon getting the quest and leaving your house, you get a special scene where Trood asks Yangus why he didn't give it to her there, where Yangus responds that she would've been less impressed if they'd done that. This series has a lot of developer foresight if you haven't noticed. There's so many moments throughout the series where you can do things the developers probably didn't expect you to do and you will be rewarded with a special scene as a result. This is very common throughout the series. It's one of the reasons why I hold Dragon Quest in such a high regard. I've never seen an RPG that anticipates the player breaking the game's intended sequence like this and acknowledges the player's tendency to color outside the lines. Now we're getting to the good stuff. Did you know that some Dragon Quest games have hidden content in the game files? It's true. To start off, let's look at Dragon Quest 1 and 2 Collection for the Game Boy. This game has hidden sprites in the game code. If you look into the game's sprites, you'll find that there's some odd ones. First of all, there appears to be an unused sprite animation for the green dragon where he moves his head, which is interesting because the game has static enemy sprites, but even more interesting than that. There's a goddamn Pikachu overworld sprite in the game. Yes, Pikachu from Pokemon is in Dragon Quest. What is he doing here? I mean, look at that. It's Pikachu in Dragon Quest. What? Was he supposed to be like a playable character or something? Or maybe a boss? How or why did they put him in the game? Oh, and that's not even where it ends. There's also a Gundam in here. That's the turn a Gundam from the anime show that debuted the same year as Dragon Quest 1 and 2 for Game Boy. They stuck Pikachu and a Gundam in this game. There's also a penguin and some sort of car creature thing. I don't really know what this one is. Crazy stuff though. I bet you didn't know about that one, huh? More hidden content. In Dragon Quest 3 for Game Boy Color, there's a hidden sprite sheet. This one is especially interesting because it has many implications about a potential Dragon Quest 4 remake for the Game Boy. You see, Dragon Quest 3 has these monster medals that you can collect by beating up monsters in the game. There's a medal for every monster and boss and you can collect them all. But what some people may not know is that there's an entire set of unused monster medals hidden in the game's code. These ones are for the monsters of Dragon Quest 4. There's medals for monsters like the King Slime and Platypunk who first appeared in DQ4 and even bosses like S. Stark have medals. This brings up so many questions that have gone unanswered for over 20 years. Why are these in the game? It obviously took time to make all of them, so why were they never used? Some people speculate that Enix was originally planning Dragon Quest 4 for Game Boy to be included on the same card as Dragon Quest 3, just like how we got 1 and 2 in a bundle. Or maybe they were planning DQ4 for Game Boy and wanted players to be able to trade medals between 3 and 4. Whatever their plan was, we have no clue about it. It's a mystery. We're not quite done here yet though. Expanding even further into this mystery is the fact that there's a new monster in the supposed DQ4 medal set that we've never seen before. The very last one at the end. It's a design for a monster that does not exist in the Dragon Quest series in any form. Not only has it never appeared in the original Dragon Quest 4, but it's not even acknowledged in the Toriyama art book with the other scrapped monsters. Square Enix has never acknowledged it either. It's the most mysterious creature in the series history. People refer to her as Queen Medusa. The only thing we know about this monster is how the head looks from the medal, and that it was most likely going to be the final boss, possibly in an Aquatic Bonus Dungeon as signified by the scrapped Aquatic Monster medals preceding it. There are many things about this monster's existence that still bother me. It never became canon, with DQ4's PS1 and DS remakes not even acknowledging it. It's completely lost to history, and the only reason we even know about it is because fans hacked the game, so the developers clearly did not want anyone to find out about it. I want to know what happened to this monster, why these medals were included in the game, and what their plans were. I hope one day we can find out the full story, but until then this is a huge unsolved mystery. Hidden content can be found all over the series, especially in Dragon Quest 8, which has locked off content including new NPC models that are otherwise never used, poses, unused maps, there's even two completely unused debug items called the Mimic Stone and the Blarney Stone. The Mimic Stone lets you recover health and battle, while the Blarney Stone wipes out your entire party instantly. What could possibly be the point of something that stupid? It was obviously intended for testing purposes. Now going back to cool fan theories, there's one theory that persisted for many years and it was eventually acknowledged by Yuji Hori himself. So in Dragon Quest 6, there's a mysterious yellow dragon who appears to fly the party to Murdoch's keep after being summoned. During this scene, Ashlyn, one of your party members, is reluctant to get on the island for some mysterious reason and so she's absent during the dragon ride. Many fans of the game have speculated that the dragon you ride is Ashlyn. And to be honest, there's some evidence backing this up. We already talked about how when you arrive in the Isle of Murdoch, Ashlyn refuses to go, claiming that doesn't feel right. This makes it so that she doesn't appear in the same room as the dragon. On the Super Famicom version, however, you could actually go back to the island summon the dragon again with Ashlyn present and they actually went out of their way to fix this oversight in the DS version by making it so that the dragon can never reappear. Very likely an intentional fix. One NPC among Ashlyn's kind, the Sorcerians, further hints towards this by saying, we Sorcerians have the power to detach our souls from our physical forms. If we're blessed with enough magical might we can even transform our bodies. Ashlyn in the acolyte has the blood of Sorceress Ashmorelda coursing through her veins. I bet she can turn into anything, even a dragon. There's just so much evidence pointing to this being true. So what's the deal? Well, in a 2014 interview, Yuji Hori confirmed it. It's true. Ashlyn is the dragon. He said there was originally going to be a more fleshed out storyline involving the dragon, but due to time constraints from his other project at the time, Chromo Trigger, they had to scrap it. So there you have it, a fan theory that turned out to be true. And of course it was Chromo Trigger that screwed Dragon Quest 6 over in the end. At least this theory can be put to rest and players can be confident that Ashlyn is in fact the mysterious dragon. So there's a lot of interesting naming conventions the series uses. Did you know that in Dragon Quest XI, every single character who was born in the Heliodar region is named after a rock? Think about it. First of all, the name Heliodar comes from our real-life mineral. Then we look at the residents of the region. There's Gemma named after Gemstone, Amber, Sandy the dog is named after Sand. There's Chalky, Cole, Carnelian, Jasper. Practically every character from Cobblestone and Heliodar are named after rocks. This includes random side characters like Roxy the Dancer. But then you have characters like Eric and Hendrick who aren't named after rocks. This is because they weren't born in Heliodar. Eric was born up north near Sniflheim while Hendrick is from this Var Drust region. Pretty cool attention to detail. Now I want to get into more fan theories. There's loads of fan theories in Dragon Quest. We've already talked about the theory of Ashlyn being the dragon which is later confirmed as being canon. It makes you wonder if there's other fan theories that Japanese Dragon Quest fans could have come up with. Well, there certainly are a few out there. When Dragon Quest XI was first revealed, we didn't know much about the game aside from the luminaries design. This didn't stop fans from speculating however, and a common fan theory that was circling around Japan was that the hero of this game was actually a younger Dragon Lord and that the game would see the main character becoming the villain at the end. The reasoning? The fact that the logo looks like an inverted version of Dragon Quest I's logo and that the luminaries color scheme had the same purple as the Dragon Lord. Yeah, he is purple therefore he is the bad guy. That was the bulk of the theory. Honestly, it was always a very flimsy theory but interesting nonetheless, and it actually did manage to predict that there would be a connection to the original games, as I'm pretty sure the devs were silent on the plot at that point. There are a lot of crazy theories out there, especially among Japanese fans. Some fans think that Terry from Dragon Quest VI somehow becomes a stark the lord of the underworld of Dragon Quest IV by discovering a secret of evolution, as hinted by the secret ending in the game. I think this is a cool theory. It's backed up by Yuji Hori's comments where he states that he originally intended for Terry, who was originally supposed to be the main character, to eventually become a demon king at the end of the game. So basically the theory goes that in the game's alternate ending, which you unlock after defeating Nocturnus, you get a special scene where Terry goes on his own to visit Nocturnus for an unknown reason. That's the main difference as to why he goes there to visit him. Fans speculate he went there to learn a secret of evolution and become stronger than ever, eventually becoming as stark and losing all of his memories. As stark is also not seen in DQ6 while he appears in DQ4 and 5. This is a batshit insane theory, but I really like how the vagueness of the series causes fans to come up with things like these. Another similar theory I've heard is that Kiefer from Dragon Quest VII eventually becomes Orgodomir, the mysterious time-hopping demon lord who has threatened the world in the game. This is a really cool theory and it's backed up by people pointing out that the two characters look somewhat similar and Orgodomir wears a ring similarly to Kiefer. Fans also point out that Kiefer makes cryptic remarks about how his destiny will change and the like. This one isn't even a bigger stretch, but it's an interesting theory nonetheless. Especially considering that since Kiefer leaves the party early on, the idea of him playing an even bigger role in the story later on is really intriguing. I like the concept of the main character having to defeat his own friend at the end. It makes their parting even more bittersweet. So aside from these, there's tons of weird theories. Some people think Naven is actually a slime-termed human because he can equip the slime armor that only slimes can typically equip. Some people think Erik and me have been Dragon Quest XI or Silver Saber Cups who turn human because of their blue hair and because Saber Cups typically roam the area they're from. It's the theories like these that really interest me, the ones that have some evidence backing them up, but are otherwise completely insane. So here's one of my fan theories, and this is one I haven't heard other people talk about, and it just shows how many little details go over many people's heads. A cool detail I know is from Dragon Quest XI. When you go to the town of Galopolis, there will be this grand horse race going on, and you'll find out that there's a horseback rider there named Faz, who is a champion and has won the San National Race countless times. He's extremely famous throughout the city, and you'll find just about every NPC talking about him. When you enter the stables, you can meet Faz yourself, and you may notice something a little different about him. Unlike the other knights of Galopolis who were yellow, his tunic is green. Like a knight of Dundresil, the fallen kingdom of the Luminary, which makes me think that Faz is actually the last survivor of Dundresil, which is very cool to me and is just something I like to think. Even though he has the Arabic naming convention of Galapolitans as opposed to the Scottish names of Dundresil citizens, I still like the idea of this great night from a far away kingdom coming here and becoming a champion. Not a detail most people would notice. So that's about as much as I wanted to go over in regards to fan theories. Now you may notice that we're inching towards the end here. I'm going to tell you some real crazy stuff you may not have known. Did you know that Dragon Quest VIII may have started out as Dark Cloud III? Now if you're wondering what the hell Dark Cloud is, it's level 5's first video game they ever made way back on the PS2, and it was an action RPG. There was a sequel to Dark Cloud II that was made a few years later. After that, the studio would go on to make Dragon Quest VIII, and we'd never hear about Dark Cloud again. Well, it's possible that they were developing Dark Cloud III, but when level 5 got the deal to make Dragon Quest VIII, they ended up scrapping the game and used the assets they created for their new project instead. The evidence? Well in the game files for Dragon Quest VIII, a line of code can be found in the game's elf files saying dark3 slash dc3 underscore sound for the sound system of Dragon Quest VIII. This clearly makes a link between Dragon Quest VIII and Dark Cloud, was Dragon Quest VIII originally supposed to be Dark Cloud III? Or maybe this was just a code name? In any case, Dark Cloud fans got screwed, but in the process we definitely got a gem with level 5's Dragon Quest games. The Celebrity Dragon Quest IX Party When Dragon Quest IX was on its way to the west, Nintendo spared no expense to promote it. It was one of their biggest releases of 2010, and they counted on it being a huge success. They made commercials starring Seth Green stalking random kids, they restore events, they dedicated a whole segment of their ethere press conference to the game, they were pushing this thing hard, and one of the results of this massive marketing campaign is the somewhat famous Celebrity Dragon Quest IX Party. You may have seen this image of Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory holding up a copy of Dragon Quest IX. This image is not fake, that's really Jim Parsons promoting the game, and he's not the only one. At Comic Con 2010, the Wired Cafe had this DQ9 pre-launch event with a bunch of celebrities. It is absolutely insane looking at it now, but they took pictures of all these celebrities playing Dragon Quest. Zachary Levi who played Shazam, there's Sam Trammell, Dylan Nicole Sprouse, Victoria Justice, the rapper Lil Jon was there playing Dragon Quest. Just so many random people here. Hideo Kojima was even there. Like it's amazing and bizarre looking back at this marketing campaign and comparing it to how DQ's marketing is handled nowadays. This was pushed just as much as any other Nintendo game and it's no wonder the game sold over a million copies over here. Just insane. So going back, Dragon Quest VIII had some promotional stuff going on too. According to an old Square Enix press release from 2005, there was a multi-million dollar marketing campaign for DQ8 in the West. Alongside commercials, print ads, and giveaway demo discs, Square Enix had their own dedicated Dragon Quest forums called Slime Knights, which has 7,000 members believe it or not. The Slime Knights forums are a relic of the past since they are now long gone. The only thing remaining from there are memories of people used to post there. From what I could find, the forums had a point system and prizes that members could earn. Accounts I've read mention that members earn mini medals by participating in quests that include things like art contests. You can win DVDs like Pirates of the Caribbean, PS2 Square Enix games, Dragon Quest merchandise, t-shirts, slime toys, and an Apple Slime Pod. I wonder what a Slime Pod is? I'm guessing it's like a DQ themed iPod, which sounds very interesting. In 2007, the forums were unfortunately closed, however it looks like that most of the community is migrated to Dragon's Den. It's a very interesting and obscure piece of Dragon Quest history, these forums, and I felt kind of sad investigating and seeing a community like this disappear. Alright, moving away from the depressing stuff, we're almost done here. Let's talk about more obscure game trivia. So in Dragon Quest 11, there's loads of little secrets I want to go over before wrapping things up. In DQ 11, the final boss, Colasmos, is trapped throughout the game in a floating space prison that characters in the game call the Erdogan's Lantern. Later on, the story starts to fall to the ground, eventually releasing him. While you might think that this giant orb which is supposed to contain Colasmos probably doesn't have anything in it, you would be wrong. As a matter of fact, Erdogan's Lantern hides a secret within. If you activate the debug camera and the console commands, you can zoom the camera into the heart of Erdogan's Lantern to find what lies within. And what you will find will surprise you. Within Erdogan's Lantern is a larval version of Colasmos in the shape of a ball. This is mind-blowing, and I don't think anyone has ever revealed this before, so for many of you, this will be your first time finding out about this. This Colasmos ball is distinctly different than your regular Colasmos. It's round and looks like it's hibernating. This model is never used in the actual game. In the actual game, Colasmos awakens in a pre-render cutscene that doesn't even use in-game models. So there's literally no reason for them to have hidden this in the Lantern. There's no reason at all. This is never used and is one of the most mysterious things you will find in the game. Even I don't know what the purpose of this is. Maybe it's a leftover from some idea they had. Maybe they were going to give Colasmos multiple forms. In any case, this is cool as hell. Four hour final part at the very bottom of the iceberg. The world of Urdrea. Dragon Quest XI's world. This world is really mysterious. It's vast and expansive and there's so much about Urdrea that we don't know and we might never know. There are so many gaps in the game's lore for players to fill in. Questions come up like, where did the Forge and Mount Fuji come from? It's mysteriously shaped like Urdrex Ramya emblem from the original Dragon Quest, but as far as we know, it's been there for hundreds of years and its existence is never explained. There's mysterious sites like this all over the world of Dragon Quest XI. And after taking a critical look at the world, you'll find yourself with more questions and answers. There's a random floating island in Urdrea called the battlefield where the oracle come used to make Legendary Sword is found. What is this island? What is it doing here? What kind of battle occurred here? Why is there a random bunny girl here? How did she get here? Why is it that in the Japanese version, the bunny girl's voice changes every time you talk to her to some random famous Japanese voice actor. There's a lot that isn't explained in this game. A whole lot and what's most mysterious to me are the glyphs. You see, you'll find across Urdrea, there are these etchings found in certain places. There's three main ones. There's the giant glyph of Yggdrasil etched into the mountain side of Cobblestone Tor. There's a taco over in the mountains by Raboria. And there's the Yggdragon on Insula Incognita. It brings up the questions of how these carvings even happened. Characters in the game make mention of the ancients throughout their party chat, with Veronica even alluding to the ancient carving runes on the side of the mountains. Who are these ancients? Are they referring to the Watchers? The ones who came before? So many questions. These runes are also inspired by the Inkin Nazca Lines, as Yuji Horai and the DQ-11 development team actually went to Machu Picchu during the development of the game and based most of the stone architecture and landscape of Cobblestone on Peru. The glyphs in Dragon Quest XI are very reminiscent of the Nazca Lines found in Peru. And some of these glyphs even differ when compared to their concept illustrations in the art book. The glyphs are mysterious, unexplained, and mind-boggling for their purpose in the world. And this brings us to our final point. The Dragon Quest XI Beta map. In the PC version of Dragon Quest XI S, the development team left a strange little secret that brings up even more questions. When you change the launch options for Dragon Quest XI, you spawn in a debug area and it is in this area where we see what looks like an early beta map of Urdrea. It has the same basic shape of Urdrea, with a few differences here and there. What is this map? What is its purpose? Well, it was likely created early on in development so that there would be some consistent planning and world building. While it looks like the map of Urdrea, it's full of differences. The map is very much a rough draft with some towns and landmarks outlined. You can see the windmills next to the ruins as well as the canals and other towns. The continents aren't exactly to scale with the final product and there are markers for some of the railway stations, but not all of them. There's even markers to denote the places where you can play Lorelai's harp to transport yourself from one area to another. Although, there's two points linked to each other that don't appear in the final game, so the developers originally planned to have a point that would transfer you way farther across the world. This harp point was removed in the final game. What's most interesting is that there's an emblem for the three glyphs located in the world. They're marked by a real Nazca glyph that you would find in the real world, solidifying my theory that parts of Urdrea are directly based on the landscape and architecture of Peru. What this all means is that the three glyphs found throughout the world of Urdrea are very purposely put in these specific locations and it was planned out very early on in development. There must be something important about them, some sort of secret meaning to why they're there. As of now, the purpose of their existence is unexplained and it might stay that way for a long while. So that's it, The Dragon Quest Iceberg. I compiled a lot of unknown facts and tidbits I've collected over years. Every headscratcher and neat little easter egg I've noticed since I've started playing the games, but the series is so huge. Every game has so much to unpack and analyze that there's sure to be some more secrets that even I might not know about. So until we discover them, I think this is a good guide for the many mysteries and secrets of the Dragon Quest series. I hope you all enjoy the video. Please let me know what you think about this in the comments. Was this interesting at all? I'd love to hear your feedback. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.