My friend bought Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy when we were kids. I liked them, but not enough to buy them for myself. I was perfectly happy with playing them at my friend's house. We would take turns with someone playing the game, and someone looking at maps and bestiaries to tell the other player what to do.
Remember the Captain N cartoon? They had a Dragon Warrior episode once and my friend and I were excited because I spent the night over at his house that Friday night, and Saturday morning we got up and thought it was cool that it was a Dragon Warrior episode because that was the game we were playing at the time.
I really didn't get into RPGs myself until the SNES, with games like FF4, FF6, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, etc. And since none of the 16-bit Dragon Quest games came out over here, I missed out on those, so Dragon Quest was never a series I got into as much. My favorite Dragon Quest game is Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime on the DS. If you've never played it, you really should!