Right now, I'm playing Dragon Quest XI S on Switch, along with Astral Chain and Ni no Kuni. It is an amazing game and is currently battling it out with Fire Emblem for my GOTY, so if you haven't played it yet, I strongly recommend it.
Back in the early 90s, when I was a kid, I saw a Dragon Warrior TV show in TV Guide. Now, by that point, I knew that a lot of stuff had the same name, but I was curious anyway. Sure enough, it was a bona fide Dragon (Quest) Warrior cartoon show. 13 episodes of the series were localized by Haim Saban and Shuki Levy, the same guys responsible for such 90s localization gems as Samurai Pizza Cats (which even the creators said was better than the Japanese original) and of course the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. I'm guessing that either licensing or poor ratings kept the series from being localized beyond those episodes. There were about 50 episodes in Japan.
The series was heavily based around Dragon Quest III, which was the best-selling video game of all time in Japan at the time, and its Japanese title was "Dragon Quest: Legend of the Hero Abel." It came out about six years before Dragon Ball Z was a thing in the United States, and at the time, anime always reminded me mostly of Zelda artwork, which was the only anime to which I was exposed on a regular basis. It aired at 6:00 on Sundays on one of the UHF channels where I lived, and I would actually get up early to watch it for as long as it was on TV. While its theme song and some of its dubbed soundtrack were done by Shuki Levy, it did incorporate versions of some of Sugiyama's music from the games.
Here is one of the localized episodes.
Naturally, given its limited localization and airing on mostly dead hours for TV, it's an obscure anime in the US, but it was my first anime series, and one of the first video game related TV shows I'd ever seen that wasn't themed around either Nintendo or Golden Age arcade games. But here it is, for your enjoyment.
Comments
Cary Woodham
10/16/2019 at 05:42 PM
I remember seeing the Dragon Warrior cartoon in our TV guides, too! But our local stations only aired it at like, four in the morning! So I never watched it. If only DVR were around back then. Yeah I could've recorded it, but who really knew how to program their VCRs?
One time when I was a kid, I spent Friday night at my friend's house and we played Dragon Warrior. Then the next Saturday morning we got up and watched cartoons, and guess what epiosde of Captain N was playing? It was the Dragon Warrior episode! We thought that was so cool when we were kids.
SanAndreas
10/16/2019 at 05:50 PM
Funny thing: Most people see a Dragon Quest game for the first time and ask why it looks so much like Dragon Ball Z. I was the opposite. Since I played the games and watched the anime years before DBZ started being localized, I thought, "This looks a lot like Dragon Warrior!"
Matt Snee
Staff Writer
10/16/2019 at 08:20 PM
Never heard of this.
I'm playing DQ11 too. Making real slow progress. Just got the sisters in my party tonight. I played about twenty hours of the ps4 version, but I'm starting fresh.
KnightDriver
10/16/2019 at 10:58 PM
Cool! I never knew there was a Dragon Warrior TV show. I got DQXI sitting here on my PS4 gathering dust. I wish I had time for it right now.
mothman
10/18/2019 at 10:25 AM
Even though I beat the PS4 version I'm playing through DQXI again on Switch and loving it. I'm in the middle of the Sniflheim chapter right now.
I want to stop and play something new but the game won't let me.
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