 Dragon Quest games are rare and valuable treasures, not just valuable and important life lessons they teach you, but many Dragon Quest games end up becoming hard to find after a while and this, combined with how desirable they are, make for a tough series to collect for. A common question I've gotten is, hey, how much is my Dragon Quest game worth? Luckily I have the answers. Today I'm going to be telling you which Dragon Quest games are the rarest and most valuable. Let's start from the beginning. It can be easily inferred that the more a game sells, the more common it is. That's obvious. If a game sells a million copies, there's at least a million copies in the world somewhere and it is super common as a result. With this in mind, the original Japanese releases of the Dragon Quest games which sold millions and millions and millions of copies are almost worthless. That's right, if you want to get an original copy of Dragon Quest 3 on the Famicom with the original box and the original manual, you could easily find this for less than $5 on the internet. They are dirt cheap. There's enough copies of Japanese DQ games out there to use as bricks to build a house. So for this video, we're going to be focusing on the rare side of DQ and we'll be primarily focusing on the North American DQ releases which are the rarest of the bunch. Starting from the very beginning, the original Dragon Quest came over to North America in 1989 as Dragon Warrior. The game was expected to be a smash hit like its Japanese counterpart so millions of copies are actually printed in anticipation. This was a bit more optimistic than Nintendo America had hoped and to make up for the modest sales in the West, the game was eventually given away for free with a Nintendo Power Magazine subscription. However, the way I see it, they were actually the bonus here. 1.5 million people in North America were privileged enough to experience Dragon Warrior and as a result I would say this game is extremely common to find on the internet and at retro game stores. I have seen loose cartridges go for around $5, they're honestly worthless price wise I mean. A complete copy with a box, manual, adventurer's guide, card, and all that I've seen for around $60 whenever I've spotted at a retro game store or flea market it's a super common game and hardly a rare treasure. The NES would end up getting 3 more DQ games in the West, DQ 2, DQ 3, and DQ 4 as Dragon Warrior 2, Dragon Warrior 3, and Dragon Warrior 4. The biggest difference between these releases and the first game is that they were published by Enix America Corporation rather than Nintendo and Enix was not quite as optimistic about sales figures. So each title would actually have more limited print runs and be rarer than the last one, selling even less with each entry but still selling quite a bit though. Dragon Warrior 2 sold 150,000 copies, Dragon Warrior 3 sold 95,000 copies, and Dragon Warrior 4 sold 80,000. So actually Dragon Warrior 4 is the rarest of the bunch and is one of the rarest NES games out there. The value depends on the demand and there is a lot of demand for Dragon Warrior 3 and Dragon Warrior 4 just because of how great they are. Dragon Warrior 3 is worth about $50 to $60 for just the cartridge while Dragon Warrior 4 is much rarer and worth up to $90 for just the cartridge. Dragon Warrior 2 has bad reputation for its difficulty and as a result it is a lot cheaper. Actually the only game out of these I don't own myself is Dragon Warrior 3 on NES mostly because of how hard it is to find a copy in decent shape. I actually once was browsing Facebook a million years ago and I saw a local retro gaming shop showing off their new games of the week and among them none other than Dragon Warrior 3. So I rushed over there and asked about it, turns out some other DQ fanboy beat me to it. The clerk told me all about how happy the guy who got the game was. He even took a freaking picture of the guy holding the cartridge. Screw that guy. Enix America Corporation shut down for years after Dragon Warrior 4's release which resulted in us westerners missing out on the greatest game of all time coming westward spiraling us down for years with no good games to play at all. The first Dragon Quest game we got in the west after this was Dragon Warrior Monsters, a DQ spinoff game for the Nintendo Game Boy published by Edo's Interactive this time around because you know Enix of America Corporation killed itself. The Dragon Warrior Monsters was localized in the year 2000. It has this amazing box art that the marketing geniuses at the new company thought was definitely superior to the world famous iconic design works of Akira Toriyama. Just a brilliant move on their part, very very inviting. Not to mention it stars Terry, a DQ character from Dragon Quest 6, which is a game that the west never even saw before. Regardless, the game did well. The game is rather common. I know a lot of people who own it and I've seen it at my local shop often. A loose copy might be around 10 to 15 while a box copy could be up to a whopping $30. Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 was localized the next year, again for the greatest handheld of its time. Only this time there was a twist. Very likely the boys over at Enix looked at Pokemon and how Nintendo tricked millions of people into buying literally two copies of the exact same game and decided man that is just plain genius. So with Dragon Warrior Monsters 2, we actually have to look at two different versions of the game. They are Dragon Warrior Monsters Kobe's Journey and Dragon Warrior Monsters Tara's Adventure. If you're wondering what the differences are, they are basically the exact same games starring the same sibling duo of Tara and Kobe. Only you play as one of them depending on which game you bought and there are slightly different monsters in each game. The boxes also form a big picture when you put them together. Cool. I've seen way more copies of Tara's Adventure out in the wild than Kobe's Journey. I'd like to say that Kobe's Journey is slightly more rare and worth more. Tara's Adventure usually goes for about $15-20 for just a cartridge and $60-70 in the original box while Kobe goes for around $10 more than that. Starting with spinoffs, the West got a big one. World of Dragon Warrior, Tornico, The Last Hope, better known as the 2nd Tornico Mystery Dungeon game. Although we never got the first one, it is a really rare game for the PlayStation 1. This is one of the rarest DQ games, probably rarer than any of the NES games. As you can see, I have my very legitimate copy right here for you to see. I'm obviously the kind of person who would pay money for a PlayStation game, don't you be mistaken. The game sold really poorly in the United States. After all, they've never seen a dungeon crawler before. I guess they expected a full RPG at the time. Because of this, it's rare as heck, though I imagine not a lot of people would want to play something like this, so the lack of demand might even things out. I've seen it go from lows of 25 to highs of 50, so not every rare game is a gold mine. If you thought these few years were big for DQ in the West, you don't even know. Not only did we get DQ7, The Monsters games, and Tornico, but there was also a double pack remake of Dragon Warrior 1 and 2 for the Game Boy as well. These versions of the game are way better than the NES ones if you ask me, but that's my opinion. This pack was really well received by critics and sold well in the United States. I've seen it all over the place, almost every time I go to the comic shop they always have a few copies there. It even has that great box art style too. It's worth around 25 to 30 dollars. Obviously you can't just have Dragon Quest 1 and 2 without the third one that wrapped up the trilogy. Dragon Warrior 3 on the Game Boy Color is almost a perfect game and critics agree. It was given the elusive 10 out of 10 perfect score from IGN at the time which was no joke. It even switched from the little gremlin looking creatures on the box back to the original art by Toriyama-sensei and we never see those things again. This game again was successful, though I guess due to the desirability and how great it is, it is slightly more expensive than the 1 and 2 pack, I'd say about $10 more. Everybody knows that after 4 comes to number 7, there's nothing in between. Dragon Warrior 7, the first mainline entry in the series that the West saw in nearly a decade. From what I know, the game did pretty great actually, it sold over 170,000 copies in North America which is much more than Dragon Warrior 2 before it, probably thanks to the huge install base of the Playstation and the growing interest in RPGs. I actually found my copy in Antique Mall. The guy running the booth actually had this, Dragon Warrior 4 NES, and a box copy of Dragon Warrior 1 NES, needless to say I grabbed all of them. It's still valuable from what I've seen and usually goes for about 30 to 40 dollars. In Quest VIII, the first game in the series to drop the Dragon Warrior title in the first game since Square Enix's merger, this game released in a world that loved RPGs. It was a huge success, sold over 400,000 copies on the PS2 in North America, and over 700,000 in other territories, and it would go without saying that it is extremely common to find and almost worthless. I own so many copies, it is cheaper for me to use them as a drink coaster as a Frisbee than buying one. This game could be about $20 for the Deluxe Day 1 edition that came with the fancy schmancy cardboard box and all that stuff. It also includes a demo disc for a far inferior game, I don't know why you would want this. After DQ VIII, Dragon Quest returned to Nintendo for a long while with a bunch of remakes, a brand new game, and a bunch of spinoffs. Dragon Quest Hero's Rocket Slime on the Nintendo DS, really awesome game, you play as this very bouncy boy, I consider it to be the greatest DQ spinoff absolutely worth playing, great action gameplay, relatively common, $30 brand new, and it could go lower used. Dragon Quest Monster's Joker came out on the DS a year later after that, it's basically the next game in the Monster series, either this game sold a lot or nobody wants it because of its sequel, but it is one of the most common DQ games out there and probably the least valuable DQ game on any Nintendo device. You want a copy, you can easily find a brand new one for less than $20. Dragon Quest Swords came out for the Wii the year after that, wow this is almost like an annual series at this point. This game is very waggly, nobody seems to like this game, $10. Dragon Quest 4 got a remake on Nintendo DS soon after this, with the other two games in the Zenithian saga planned, it's a great version of the game, only hindered by the fact that it doesn't have the party chat feature like its Japanese counterpart while the English mobile port does, which I feel kicks the value a bit, it is still rare however and should go for about $40 brand new with prices dropping depending on condition. Dragon Quest V, not only is this the greatest game ever created, it is also the first time the West has ever seen this game on Nintendo DS in 2009, because this is considered a candidate for the best game in the series and widely considered to be the best version of DQ 5 and is also the only way of playing it aside from the mobile port, this version is very desirable although not extremely rare, I could see it going for about $40-50 brand new. Dragon Quest 9, this is a game I actually have the sales figures for, it sold over a million copies in the western world, it was the most successful DQ game in recent years solely because of all the commercials featuring Seth Green stalking random teenagers. The same year DQ 9 released it was already heavily discounted on Black Friday, despite this however it kind of maintained its value and is actually becoming a bit hard to find these days in brand new condition, a brand new copy of the game is worth $40-50. After Dragon Quest 9 came out, we in the West got Dragon Quest 6 for the first time ever in 2011, good game probably the best version of it depending on if you'd rather play the Super Famicom version or this, this game is rare, it's probably one of the rarest games in the series, it's a Nintendo DS game that came out in 2011, right around the time the 3DS was releasing, so it's one of the last DS games out there, an end of life title. And like most end of life titles on Nintendo consoles, it got overlooked and tons of people were kicking themselves for not getting it before. A brand new copy of this game, complete with the case and inserts, is worth around $125. A loose copy without the box is worth like $50 alone, this is one of the rarest DS games and everyone wants it to complete their DQ collection. So yeah, have fun finding a copy of this. What's next? Oh right, Dragon Quest Monsters Joker had a sequel in late 2011 the same year, so there were two DS Dragon Quest games released at the end of the console's life. This one is worth like $40 bucks brand new, it's relatively rare but the demand isn't really there. The 3DS has two Dragon Quest games in English, DQ7 and DQ8's remakes. These games are really great, I consider them to be the best versions of DQ7 and 8, and here's the complicated part, these remakes took years to get localized, DQ7 remake hit the west in 2016 and DQ8 remake hit the west in 2017. By the time DQ8's remake came over, the Switch was already out and the 3DS was in the end of its life. Until recently, the official Amazon price dropped for DQ7 at $23.45 brand new, sold by Amazon. Heck, you can still buy it on Nintendo's official store website if you want. It isn't a very rare or expensive game but it is important for your collection as it is much nicer than the PS1 version. DQ8 on the 3DS is a different story. From what I can tell, it has been out of print for a while. I've seen it on my local Walmart recently discounted to $30 but it is pretty much gone now wherever I look. I've seen this happen a few times. DQ8 on 3DS is the next DQ6. It's going to become rare. It's worth $40 brand new right now but I'm predicting it'll be worth much more in the future. If you see it, get it, do not hesitate, this will be a rare 3DS treasure. Moving away from the DS finally, the PS4 got a bunch of DQ games. And none of them are worth anything I'm sad to say. Dragon Quest Builders, Dragon Quest Heroes, and DQ Heroes 2 are probably worth around $10 sealed. They are so common and not very expensive. Recently for Black Friday, the Square Enix online store was selling them for $5 a piece. $5! For a brand new game. Can you believe it? DQ11 on PS4 dropped to $20 so far after a year and Builders 2 is already getting there. For some reason, PS4 games seem to have more copies printed and they just get cheaper as time goes along. Unlike Nintendo, DQ Bullers 1 came out on the Switch and it is not the same situation as the PS4 version. It is rare and out of print. Also a side note, this is the only Dragon Quest game that came out in the West before Japan. We got it in February 2018 and Japan got it in March 2018. Isn't that wacky? Anyway, this game is out of print, I've never seen this in any store I've ever been to. It is never dipped below $40 on Amazon. This is another one of those situations where I predict it will become super rare in the future. It's worth like $50 right now and as soon as the copies disappear from websites like Target that still have it in stock, I predict it'll fetch for $100. Like the Vita version. What you didn't know? In Asia, there was a limited print run of the Vita version of Dragon Quest Builders in English. It has a different covered art than the Japanese Vita version and the text is entirely in English. Wanna guess how much this is worth? It's worth like $80 to $100 brand new. Holy. That is a lot. It's comparable to DQ6 on DS's price. May be a tough call for the rarest game. So that's about everything up until now excluding Dragon Quest 11s and Builders 2 on Switch which seem to be about the same price they were at launch, a bit too early to discuss those. So now for the big question, which is the most valuable of the bunch? It has to be Dragon Warrior 4 on the NES. This is the most valuable Dragon Quest game in the series. The cartridge alone reaches highs of $90. With the box and everything else included, much, much more. It isn't as rare as Tornacle of the Last Hope which is rumored to be the lowest selling entry in the entire franchise but it's still more valuable because nobody cares about Tornacle of the Last Hope or wants that game. Runner-ups? Dragon Quest 6 on the DS and DQ Builders Asian English version on the Vita. Those are definitely the second place in terms of value. Games that I think are going to become rare in the future? Dragon Quest 8 on the RDS and DQ Builders on Switch. That about wraps this up. I hope you all found this guide helpful. Have fun collecting more Dragon Quest games and please let me know in the comments which ones you have so far. See you next time.