Chunsoft Archives - The Greatest Game Music

Dragon Quest III Soundtrack (Nintendo 3DS)

Dragon Quest III Soundtrack (Nintendo 3DS), Koichi Sugiyama, 2017

While its predecessors had been immensely successful in their own right, it was really with 1988’s Dragon Quest III that the venerable franchise turned into a commercial juggernaut. The original NES game itself sold a staggering 3.8 million copies in Japan alone. Add in a few more million copies for the game’s various remakes, and Dragon Quest III turns out to be the franchise’s most successful entry (it also spawned an urban myth about the Japanese government blocking future releases of Dragon Quest games on school days to curb truancy). The game itself didn’t revolutionise the JRPG genre. However, developer Chunsoft still expanded upon the first two Dragon Quest titles’ gameplay to introduce a character class system. This feature would become a staple of future Dragon Quest games.

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Dragon Quest IV Soundtrack (Mobile)

Dragon Quest IV Soundtrack (Mobile), Koichi Sugiyama, 2014

It is to the credit of developer Chunsoft and publisher Enix that coming off the jaw-dropping success of Dragon Quest III, they decided not to play things safe with the next game in the franchise. Instead, they went to shake things up, going so far as to turn the game’s story into a series of initially unrelated chapters that introduce the various party members – before they all come together in the final chapter. Other innovations included day and night cycles, an early artificial intelligence system to give non-playable party members combat instructions, and the choice of which characters to use in battle. Dragon Quest IV turned into another million-seller for Enix – not quite as successful as its predecessor, but 3.1 million copies sold just in Japan for the NES original is not exactly a bad result either.

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Dragon Quest V Soundtrack (PlayStation 2)

Dragon Quest V Soundtrack (PlayStation 2), Koichi Sugiyama, 2004

Considering just how big the Dragon Quest franchise has always been in Japan, it was a bit of a surprise to see it landing on the SNES only in 1992 – maybe the last big 8-bit franchise to make the jump. Of course, once Dragon Quest V was released, it was another massive success for Chunsoft and Enix, selling 2.8 million copies on the SNES. Add in sales of its remakes (PlayStation 2 in 2004, Nintendo DS in 2008 and mobile phones in 2014), and the figure exceeds six million units.

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Homeland Soundtrack

Homeland Soundtrack, Hayato Matsuo, 2005

Nintendo’s GameCube wasn’t blessed with a vast number of system exclusives – and what made the situation even more frustrating was that many games were only released in specific territories (out of the nearly 650 GameCube titles, only 281 ended up on store shelves in Japan!) As a result, there’s not a huge number of hidden GameCube treasures waiting to be unearthed – but those that do exist can be particularly obscure and little-known. Case in point: Homeland, an online RPG by Dragon Quest developer Chunsoft, was only released in Japan. It proved innovative in several ways – one of only four online games for the system, it was the only GameCube title where the console acted as a server. And instead of allowing parties of just four (like the GameCube’s Phantasy Star Online), Homeland let players band together in groups of up to 36!

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Shiren the Wanderer 3 Soundtrack (Wii)

Shiren the Wanderer 3 Soundtrack (Wii), Hayato Matsuo, 2008

The Shiren the Wanderer franchise is one of those video game series that has generated a surprising number of titles, despite never being blessed with outstanding sales numbers. Upon its release in Japan in 2008, Fushigi no Dungeon: Fuurai no Shiren 3: Karakuri Yashiki no Nemuri Hime was the seventh game in the long-running franchise of roguelikes. Making matters somewhat confusing, Atlus USA released the game in the USA as Shiren the Wanderer (not to be confused with the 1995 SNES original). For the purpose of this review, we’ll stick with Shiren the Wanderer 3. Like more or less all other Shiren the Wanderer titles, the game generated respectable reviews and decent sales without leaving a particularly strong impression either way. What several reviewers did remark upon was that the game’s difficulty had been toned down somewhat from its predecessors, making this a more accessible entry in the franchise.

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Shiren the Wanderer Soundtrack (SNES)

Shiren the Wanderer Soundtrack (SNES), Koichi Sugiyama, 1995

It’s a bit surprising that it took publisher Enix a full seven years to create spin-off games for its monstrously successful Dragon Quest franchise. Enix’ first attempt to widen the Dragon Quest universe was 1993’s Torneko no Daibouken: Fushigi no Dungeon for the SNES. The game was successful enough to kickstart its own franchise: Mystery Dungeon. The next entry in this burgeoning series was Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer, again released on the SNES. One of the system’s few roguelikes – replete with randomly generated levels and a punishing difficulty level – Shiren the Wanderer sold sufficient copies to create yet another franchise of its own. Looking to put their own creative stamp on the Mystery Dungeon series, developer Chunsoft differentiated the game from its Dragon Quest brethren by setting it in a fantasy version of feudal Japan.

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