On the first day of release, 190,000 copies were sold, which is a very, very impressive number.

When this number reached Mars Entertainment Japan, everyone, including Hironobu Sakaguchi, was shocked by this number, knowing that even Nintendo's "The Legend of Zelda" relied on the popularity that Shigeru Miyamoto had accumulated before, but it did not reach such sales on the first day.

Although this figure is still far from the first-day sales record set by "Fire Emblem", the market for "Fire Emblem" is in the United States after all, and the market in the United States is not at all comparable to Japan, so naturally it cannot be compared.

And Hironobu Sakaguchi did not return to his residence, but with the people of the "Final Fantasy" development team to experience his direct opponent "Dragon Quest" this time, they did not get the cartridge of this game beforehand, and now it is officially released to be able to experience it in person, although in the previous month or so, on "Fami Pass", many news of participating in the test of this game were reported, and the evaluation of this game was pushed to a height that was not inferior to "The Legend of Zelda".

But as a game designer, you shouldn't judge a game based on what other people have to say without experiencing it yourself.

Moreover, the designer to experience a game is completely different from the experience of ordinary players, focusing on different points, and the feeling of getting the best after the natural experience will naturally be different.

First of all, the free naming system of "Dragon Quest" does give Hironobu Sakaguchi a great sense of substitution, although Jester said before that it is possible to increase the sense of substitution brought by the game lock by letting players name their own characters through guò, but Hironobu Sakaguchi did not take it seriously, there are pros and cons, because this will severely destroy the storytelling and epicness of an RPG game.

In Hironobu Sakaguchi's view, in a good RPG, there must be a kind of player who plays the role of a hero. The feeling of completing an epic story, that is to say, storytelling, is the most important thing in Hironobu Sakaguchi's eyes.

And on the screen, "Dragon Quest" is also much brighter than his "Final Fantasy", and in terms of painting style, "Dragon Quest", a cartoon-oriented style written by Akira Toriyama himself, is also more obviously loved by young players, which is also a matter of no choice, Hironobu Sakaguchi did not regard young players as his main audience for this game at the beginning.

"His music is brilliantly written, it's not the same style as us. Ours should be a little more ethereal, and they are even more atmospheric. ”

This is Nobuo Uematsu's evaluation.

For Nobuo Uematsu's musical literacy, Hironobu Sakaguchi is naturally convinced, and Matsuno Yasushi has also said that the game script of Dragon Quest is also very good, and no matter what else, just relying on such an excellent script to write a novel can get very good sales.

The entire Final Fantasy development team spent the night talking about Dragon Quest cartridges.

Final conclusions. It's also similar to what Famitsu said in the review, it's a very good, and very Japanese game, even though it's a Western fantasy story. But it is perfectly interpreted in the way of the Japanese, and the sales of 190,000 copies on the first day confirm that this game is indeed very suitable for the Japanese aesthetics, and ......

"I'm afraid it starts tomorrow. This game is going to have a terrible sales wave. ”

Hironobu Sakaguchi said to everyone with some concern that it was only the first day of "Dragon Quest", and he was able to burst out with such enthusiasm for buying. This is still before word of mouth is established, and if the game's excellent quality is passed on by word of mouth over time, the purchasing power that can be generated in the player base will be very scary.

Although Jester is far away in the United States, he is always paying attention to the news of the release of "Dragon Quest".

He also gave an order to the employees of the Japanese branch to pass on the news of "Dragon Quest" to him as soon as possible, and when Jester heard that "Dragon Quest" sold 190,000 copies on the first day, he was also extremely shocked.

For Jester, what he is most worried about is the loss of the situation that he has managed to recover in terms of game console share in Japan in the past six months, and "Dragon Quest" is what he is most worried about.

Because he knows that this is a game that can drive players all over Japan crazy.

As for the European and American markets, he is not too worried, because the audience of this game was not aimed at it at the beginning, and in the history he is familiar with, the sales of "Dragon Quest" in non-Japanese regions have not been very good, which is also a common problem with the wind direction game, more than 20 years later, there is a similar game with the style of "Dragon Quest", it is also a game with a strong Japanese style, and it also has a very high sales in Japan, but as soon as it comes out of Japan, sales immediately fall to the bottom.

This game is Yokai Watch.

However, Jester's worries are useless, he can only wait quietly for the news to come, and hope that "Final Fantasy" can snipe "Dragon Quest" successfully.

In fact, in essence, "Final Fantasy" and "Dragon Quest" are two completely different games in terms of content and style, compared to the style that can be seen everywhere in "Dragon Quest", the style of "Final Fantasy" is more free, and it is easier to be welcomed by players in other regions, but in terms of style, "Final Fantasy" is much more gloomy, and such a game will not be loved by young players by nature.

Of course, this game is also much deeper than "Dragon Quest" in terms of content.

Although Jester is confident that the quality of "Final Fantasy" is not inferior to "Dragon Quest", although he has not played the current version of "Dragon Quest", but with his trial of "Final Fantasy", unless "Dragon Quest" can reach the level of the third part, otherwise, it is impossible to be better than Hironobu Sakaguchi's "Final Fantasy".

However, he didn't have much confidence that he would be able to snipe Dragon Quest in the Japanese market.

Surpassing "Dragon Quest" in terms of sales is not a victory for him, because the game "Dragon Quest" has a congenital deficiency, and he has never worried about the sales of "Final Fantasy", to put it mildly, even if the world sales of "Dragon Quest" combined, it may not be as high as the North American sales of "Final Fantasy", because Dreambox's share in the North American market is too high compared to FC/NES.

However, in the Japanese market, the idea of relying on "Final Fantasy" to further narrow the gap between Nintendo's market share may be in vain, because with the power shown by "Dragon Quest" on the first day, not to mention shortening the platform share, it will be a secret luck not to be further expanded.

The next day, the sales of "Dragon Quest" did not rise on a large scale as Hironobu Sakaguchi expected, but instead declined to a certain extent.

In the end, Nintendo's count was 20,000 copies lower than the first day, and there were only 170,000 copies.

But this news did not make Jester breathe a sigh of relief, this number that is a little different from his prediction does not mean that there is a problem with his prediction, but that the excellent reputation of the game "Dragon Quest" is brewing, and when it breaks out, it will inevitably be unstoppable.

This is also the most worrying thing for Jester.

Because Final Fantasy will be released just three days later, on July 25.

What can be expected is that the time for the sales boom caused by the word-of-mouth accumulated by "Dragon Quest" will only be in those days.

The second day of the release in Japan is also the first day of release in North America, but in the North American market, "Dragon Quest" is far from showing their strength in the Japanese market, although there were many players who came to watch because of the publicity at the beginning, but many people gave up buying after the experience, but there are still many who choose to buy in the end.

In addition, NES's share in the North American market is already very low, so this time "Dragon Quest" did not cause too many waves in the North American market, and the sales in North America on the first day of Nintendo's statistics in North America were only less than 3,000 copies.

Compared to "The Legend of Zelda", which caused a certain sensation in North America and greatly increased the possession of NES, it is not the same at all.

In Japan, Dragon Quest sales continued to decline on the third day, but the number of copies dropped a lot compared to the second day, and finally Nintendo counted the sales on the third day to 168,000 copies.

This is a very obvious signal, which means that the word-of-mouth in the early days of "Dragon Quest" has almost accumulated, and it will be their outbreak soon.

And the release time of Final Fantasy has long been set, and it is absolutely impossible to change it.

Hironobu Sakaguchi saw that "Dragon Quest" swept the whole army in the Japanese market, and even "The Legend of Zelda" was released in the Japanese market, and he didn't have the slightest worry that it was impossible, but now it is ready to be sent and has to be released.

On the fourth day, the sales of "Dragon Quest" began to rise, reversing the downward trend of the previous days, and in the end, Nintendo's count was 210,000 copies, 20,000 copies more than the 190,000 copies on the first day.

It was in this context that Hironobu Sakaguchi's Final Fantasy was the first to be released in Japan.

Hironobu Sakaguchi doesn't know what Jester thinks now, but for himself, as a work that is not inferior to "Dragon Quest", it must not fail. (To be continued......) R1292