Most people see Dragon Quest as the game that shaped JRPGs as they’re known today, but many don’t realise it also played a key role in pioneering the “Mystery Dungeon” subgenre. When 1980’s Rogue came out for PCs, it introduced brilliant, infinitely replayable concepts like procedural generation, but it was notoriously inaccessible to the average player. Before Torneko’s Great Adventure reshaped the formula, playing the original Rogue was an exercise in unbearable friction due to its vague, abstract ASCII graphics, unfair RNG, and trial-by-death gameplay.
Torneko’s Great Adventure was not only the first “Mystery Dungeon” game, but also the first Dragon Quest spin-off, which went on to become its own franchise while also giving rise to the Shiren the Wanderer series. How did such a massively influential game go unnoticed for so long? Being stuck in Japan for over 30 years didn’t help, but now it’s been remade with a dazzling HD-2D look. Reborn as Dragon Quest Heroes: Torkeno’s Mystery Dungeon Classic HD and available for the first time in English, gamers can finally experience the legendary classic that has inspired countless titles.
Ever played Dragon Quest IV? One chapter focuses on a portly merchant with a dream of owning the world’s greatest shop. The humble, family-oriented and sharp-witted Torneko built a thriving commercial empire, financed a transcontinental tunnel, and used his own ship and resources to aid the heroes in defeating the devil.
Mystery Dungeon begins off with Torneko settling down near a small town to raise his family after his Dragon Quest IV adventures. Ever the ambitious merchant, he plans to open a shop but needs goods to sell, and hears of a nearby cavern full of treasures and monsters. When he asks the local King for permission to explore it, the King firmly declines, warning of the labyrinth’s ever-changing dangers. To prove he’s worthy, the King tasks him with a challenge: retrieve the lost crown on the 10th floor.
The quest for the crown on the tenth floor is essentially a tutorial, introducing the core focus of the game: dungeon crawling to collect loot for the store. As Torneko dives deeper into the main dungeon, the player sells off the rare items he brings back alive. The loot funds the renovation and expands Torneko’s shop and family home from a tiny shack into a sprawling mercantile empire.
Believe it or not, the game does have an ending. Reaching the absolute blackest depths of the main dungeon, Torneko can find the “Box of Happiness.” In the most Dragon Quest-y twist imaginable, the Box of Happiness is not some kind of cosmic artefact that grants wishes or has immeasurable value. The truth is revealing and kind of bittersweet, making the whole journey kind of touching and poetically ironic for a game about the value of money. True happiness wasn’t the magical loot, but the journey and the thriving business Torneko and his family built together.
Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon Classic HD is defined by its strict turn-based, grid-based movement. The game is played from a top-down perspective with grid-based movement on a turn-based “tick” system. For every single action Torneko takes, whether he steps onto an adjacent tile, swings a sword, or even eats an item, every monster on the map takes exactly one action simultaneously. Time only moves when Torneko moves, making the gameplay feel like a high-stakes tactical puzzle, allowing time to pause and carefully plan the next action. It’s an old but straightforward system that gets the job done, and while it can feel a bit stiff and limiting, it really comes together when not approached like an action game.
The core loop relies on the tension of procedural generation and permadeath. Every single time Torneko steps through the dungeon’s entrance, the entire layout, item placement, trap locations, and enemy spawns are completely randomised. Torneko’s level is hard-reset back to one at the start of every single run. True progression doesn’t come from stats, but from accumulated knowledge of the game’s mechanics and the gear/loot scavenged along the way. Since so much of the experience is randomised, there’s no telling how the experience will unfold. Even if things go well, at any second, Torneko’s campaign can come to a painful and embarrassing halt.
Dying is painful and boots Torneko back to the surface, stripped of all collected gold and forced to lose every single item he picked up. For a lot of gamers, this sucks and is where most people will drop the game, yet it’s very addictive and rewarding to stick with it because the euphoric rush of finding stairs to the next floor is indescribable. Another layer of tension is Torneko’s hunger gauge, which constantly depletes. While it feels gross to pick up any loaf of bread from the dungeon’s dirty floor, it’s the only way to keep the fat guy going.
While Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon Classic HD got a charming HD-2D facelift, it’s very apparent that it was originally a Super Famicom game. It might not look like it’s over 30 years old, but it definitely feels that way with its minimal menu and sluggish, frequent text windows. Some actions, like rotating Torneko or navigating the menu, don’t count as a tick, but remembering the button mapping can be a bit tricky since it’s easy to mix up inputs, and mistakes in the Mystery Dungeon can cost the entire run. Compounded with dealing with the inherent randomisation of items and enemies, expect to eventually have a bad run. For this genre, it’s part of the fun to be given the worst hand once in a while and watch the game laugh at the player’s expense.
Visually, Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon definitely looks like an HD-2D Super Famicom game. It’s not ugly, but it’s also not the most accomplished HD-2D reimagining either. This is as good as it possibly could look. Mystery Dungeon‘s main draw at the time was seeing Akira Toriyama’s monster designs from multiple angles. It was novel because they were traditionally only drawn from the front in battles in prior Dragon Quest games. For the most part, the sprites hold up very nicely and still burst with personality as they did decades ago.
