Shiren The Wanderer

Unlike licensed crossovers within the Mystery Dungeon franchise, this series features original characters; including the eponymous r?nin protagonist Shiren and his traveling companion and talking weasel Koppa, with a plot and the location set generally in feudal Japan, and though indicative of the core games, which is navigating through a randomly generated dungeon using turn-based moves. In dungeons, they have to fight monsters while collecting items to survive throughout the adventure, whether to protect against stronger foes, avoid unseen traps and hazards, or avoid starving, with the goal of exiting the dungeon after a fixed number of floors. Most Mystery Dungeon games center around exploring a dungeon with randomly generated layouts and fights. Features distinct to the Shiren the Wanderer series include the "Melding Jar" which allows players to synthesize items and weapons into more powerful ones. A unique gameplay element that first appeared in Shiren the Wanderer GB2: Magic Castle of the Desert and later in the Mystery Dungeon series and its crossovers is rescuing other players via passwords. They went with the idea of player sharing passwords instead of using the Game Boy's Game Link Cable in order to help others, as there were not many owners of the cable. Another gameplay that was introduced in this series was the ability to collect monsters in dungeons via an item in Shiren the Wanderer 2: Shiren's Castle and the Oni Invasion, along with a place to let the player see their collection. It was later reused in the franchise, notably in Dragon Quest: Young Yangus and the Mysterious Dungeon, and the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series minus the use of an item. Koichi Nakamura explained that the appeal of the Mystery Dungeon series is that every game is different and that players skills are constantly being challenged, which helps the player feel deeply involved. Seiichiro Nagahata, who supervised and planned the development of the Nintendo DS version of Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer, explained that the Mystery Dungeon series is all about "tension" and "reasoning". Before the series' creation, the Mystery Dungeon franchise had only one game known as Torneko's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon in 1993. It was Chunsoft's first try on bringing the roguelike genre to home console after Sega's attempt, of which the latter was met with little success. The company wanted to work on the new features and gameplay mechanics featured in NetHack, a variant of Rogue, with one of them being able to steal items from a shopkeeper. However, it was not possible to convert the new content from NetHack with characters from the Dragon Quest series; one case was with Torneko, who is himself a merchant in the series. In 2020, Tomie has left a secret message in the Nintendo Switch and Steam ports of The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate, indicating he is still able to work on the next games if there are enough voices from the fans to green-lit a new Mystery Dungeon game within the company. The soundtracks were composed by late Dragon Quest composer Koichi Sugiyama, and Hayato Matsuo for this series.