This is what inspired me to write this post, given that people have argued for Sora, Geno, and other roster picks citing all of these articles but never Erdrick or another Dragon Quest character. You can thank me later
@Calane
Anyways, let's begin with a history lesson. Dragon Quest is the grandfather of the entire RPG genre, with the first game in the series releasing on the NES
an entire year and a half before the
first Final Fantasy game. It is Square Enix's 2nd best selling series, sitting at
75 million units sold as of a year ago between its main titles and spin-offs, and has a long history with Nintendo, with every main entry in the series being playable on Nintendo consoles (only 2 of 11 main series games weren't on Nintendo consoles initially, being 7 and 8, though they later received 3DS remakes). Nintendo even published Dragon Quest I, VI, VII, VIII, and IX within Western countries. IX is notable as it was a third-party DS game published by Nintendo, something only done for Dragon Quest and Level-5 games in the DS era. Mario and co. have also crossed over with the Dragon Quest bunch multiple times in
the Fortune Street series, creating a precedent for a crossover between Nintendo and Dragon Quest. More recently, Dragon Quest XI was
one of the first games revealed for the Nintendo Switch, then called the Nintendo NX, and more recently has been announced to be an upgraded version named
Dragon Quest XI S (
appearing at this year's Jump Festa), which will include voice acting among other new features. Needless to say, the ties between Nintendo and Dragon Quest are VERY strong.
Additionally Dragon Quest's is a cultural phenomenon in Japan. This game series is so large that it's spawned
an urban myth on the level of "the average human eats 8 spiders in their sleep per year" about there being a law that Dragon Quest games had to be released on weekends, or that when Dragon Quest games released it was akin to a national holiday. While there is a
Dragon Quest Day, it's an unofficial holiday, and
in reality, 300 kids were arrested for truancy when Dragon Quest III released and muggings of Dragon Quest games became so widespread that there were hearings about in the Japanese parliament, leading the developers to feel bad about
creating a nationwide issue and moving the game's release dates to the weekend. The series is large enough to be a
common conversation topic in Japan, and is considered by many within the Japanese gaming industry to be
Japan's national game. I **** you not, this series is so big that it caused the entire staff of the HiatusxHiatus HunterxHunter anime to go on hiatus
JUST TO PLAY DRAGON QUEST, the series has a world record in the Guinness Book of World Records for being
the first game to inspire a ballet, and
has an amusement park attraction at Universal Studios Japan (where Nintendo will be soon), that's is how big this series is.
Due to Dragon Quest's Japanese popularity, Sakurai talks about it quite a bit. In the
Sakurai x Normura Interview Sakurai mentions game designer Yosuke Saito (who worked on Dragon Quest X) on "a list of game designers born in 1970, [where] there's quite a few big names" alongside Hideki Kamiya, Yoko Taro, and John Carmack, and participated in a
roundtable discussion with series creator Yuji Horii and Junichi Masuda of Pokémon fame where they discussed Dragon Quest XI. He's notably advocated for the series twice, first in 2011 when
he stood up for Dragon Quest X and expressed that he looks forward to it, and
plays Devil's Advocate for the series' difficulty, also directly acknowledging the series' popularity in the process, and went far as finding a
workaround to play Dragon Quest Heroes among other games while recovering from his arm injury.. Sakurai also notably
lists Dragon Quest III alongside Megaman, Final Fantasy, and Ocarina of Time among others when talking about anniversaries, and
COMPARES KIRBY (you know, that one character that HE CREATED AND TREATS LIKE HIS CHILD) TO THE MAIN CHARACTER OF A DRAGON QUEST GAME. Needless to say, Dragon Quest is on Sakurai's radar.
Now, to address the common counterarguments:
The first is the series' western popularity. While the series is certainly historic, and is amazingly popular in Japan, it largely lacks a presence in the West, with
3 million+ out of 4 million copies (more than 75%) of Dragon Quest XI being sold in Japan instead of the West. It's no small secret that Square Enix has been fighting a decades long battle (
sometimes alongside Nintendo) to make Dragon Quest popular in the West, and it seems like
they're stacking the deck to make Dragon Quest XI the game that breaks through. I believe that Square Enix would be willing to make a gamble on the inclusion of a Dragon Quest character in Smash Bros. in an attempt to boost the series' western popularity. We've seen a good amount people interested in playing Persona with the inclusion of Joker, and "the Smash effect" could similarly boost Dragon Quest's western sales in the future.
Second, the licensing. Many people cite Dragon Quest as a "licensing nightmare" in an attempt to discredit the series' inclusion, but it's not as complicated as you'd think. Dragon Quest as a whole is between four parties: Square Enix (Development, IP ownership), Armor Project (game design), Bird Studio (character design), and Koichi Sugiyama (music). Of those four, two are no problem to deal with, being Square Enix and Armor Project, run by series' director Yuji Horii, both of whom have benefitted from positive relations with Nintendo and would no doubt like to have a Dragon Quest character in Smash to boost the series' Western popularity. That leaves Bird Studio, run by Akira Toriyama, and Koichi Sugiyama as the wildcards in rights negotiation for Dragon Quest content. However, I'm willing to believe that both will cooperate. For one, Akira Toriyama worked closely alongside Arc System Works and Namco Bandai to design
Android 21, an original character, for Dragon Ball Fighterz. Namco's involvement in this scenario is notable, as they're also developer Smash Bros. Ultimate, and using their connections developing the Dragon Ball games, could bring Toriyama to the negotiating table if he isn't already there. Additionally,
in developing at least Fighterz, the developers worked alongside Toei Animation and Shueisha instead of Toriyama, who made slight changes to the game to fit with the Dragon Ball IP, which could be taken as Toriyama taking a back seat when it comes to adaptations of his work. Given how many Dragon Ball games have been made, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case Goku, his star character, has been licensed out on a couple of occasions to Fuji TV and is the ambassador of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games, which leaves me with little doubt he'd be willing to work with Nintendo on a Dragon Quest character for Smash Bros (one of the largest crossovers ever) and grant Sakurai the proper artistic license to make a Dragon Quest character a reasonable inclusion. As for Sugiyama? The use of midi music files has been suggested multiple times and could be a viable way to get Dragon Quest into Smash Bros. if needed. If Nintendo and Sakurai decide to go the orchestral route they might run into trouble due to either money or Sugiyama's seeming unwillingness to let us worldwide players have orchestral music (this is overblown, however, as Dragon Quest XI had a midi soundtrack worldwide instead of just in the West), which is the only problem I could viably see happening. However, Nintendo has dealt with this before and will do it again if negotiations go right, at worst we just end up with midis instead of orchestral music and remixes. As for the controversy surrounding Sugiyama, that's a nonissue, given that Square Enix has made a statement about it saying that
it doesn't speak to company policy and are moving ahead with Dragon Quest anyways.
If Square Enix has the chance to push Dragon Quest, I could easily see them doing so. I see a Dragon Quest character as one of, if not the likeliest Square Enix character given that everything seems to line up for it. Dragon Quest is the most historic choice, and while not iconic worldwide, has the proper circumstances surrounding it to make up for that fact and justify its inclusion in Smash.
