Dragon Quest XII

Dragon Quest, previously published as Dragon Warrior in North America until 2005, is a franchise of Japanese role-playing video games created by Armor Project , Bird Studio and Sugiyama Kobo to its publisher Enix, with all of the involved parties co-owning the copyright of the series since then. In addition, there have been numerous manga, anime and novels published under the franchise, with nearly every game in the main series having a related adaptation. The series introduced a number of features to the genre and has had a significant impact on the development of other role-playing games. Square Enix did not register the Dragon Quest trademark for use in the United States until 2002. The basic premise of most Dragon Quest games is to play a hero who is out to save the land from peril at the hands of a powerful evil enemy, with the hero usually accompanied by a group of party members. Common elements persist throughout the series and its spinoff games: turn-based combat; recurring monsters, including the Slime, which became the series' mascot; a text-based menu system; and random encounters in most of the main series. While over the decades many different development companies worked on Dragon Quest, the series has had its creators since its inception, as scenario writer and game designer Yuji Horii, character designer Akira Toriyama, and prior to his death, music composer Koichi Sugiyama have handled their respective roles on most games in the series. According to Horii, the game will have a darker tone, feature more meaningful choices, and overhaul the traditional Dragon Quest turn-based combat. The franchise includes several spin-off games, including the Dragon Quest Monsters RPG. The series has also inspired arcade games such as the Japanese Dragon Quest: Monster Battle Road, where players compete for real-life cards with monster data that the arcade game issues to the players through a slot on its front. The Mystery Dungeon and Itadaki Street series use characters and other elements from Dragon Quest games, and the Mystery Dungeon series has gone on to spawn its own franchise. In 1993 Chunsoft developed a SNES game that included Torneko , a character that first appeared in Dragon Quest IV. The success of Torneko no Daib?ken spawned the Mystery Dungeon series that has grown to include franchises beyond Dragon Quest, as well as other clones. When Enix took over the Monopoly-inspired video game series Itadaki Street, the Dragon Quest franchise became an integral part of the game in its second version, Itadaki Street 2: Neon Sain wa Bara Iro ni. Each version has slight differences, such as the monster that appear in them.Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart is a prequel to Dragon Warrior VII, following Keifer who is pulled into Torland and must find the six Orbs of Loto in order to return. Kenshin Dragon Quest: Yomigaerishi Densetsu no Ken is a stand-alone game in which the controller is shaped like a sword, and a toy shield contains the game's hardware.Dragon Quest Swords for the Wii uses the motion sensing Wii Remote as a sword.