Back in 1990, Nintendo Power subscribers got a free copy of Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest in Japan). The chaos of shipping so many copies must have been wild. Does anyone have stories from this time?
I still remember the day I found that game in my mailbox. It felt like Christmas came early.
I was part of that madness! Getting Dragon Warrior for free locked me in as a fan forever.
Turner said:
I was part of that madness! Getting Dragon Warrior for free locked me in as a fan forever.
I think I subscribed later because I had to buy mine at the mall. My first issue had Final Fantasy on the cover.
Fun fact: FF1 has a nod to Dragon Warrior. One of the tombstones in a town says ‘Here lies Erdrick.’
Big successes always come with a bit of chaos, don’t they?
This was such a cool promotion. I still can’t believe they gave a whole game away.
Does anyone know if the rest of the newsletter exists somewhere?
This is so interesting. Never thought about how much work it took to pull that off.
Dragon Warrior III and IV are some of my favorite games of all time.
Jem said:
Dragon Warrior III and IV are some of my favorite games of all time.
Have you tried the remake of 3 yet? It’s really well done.
Whatever their strategy was, it worked on me. I got my free copy, and I’ve been hooked on Dragon Quest ever since.
Back then, I was lucky to get one or two new games a year, usually for Christmas. So, getting a free game in the mail was a massive deal. I still remember how excited I was when I opened the mailbox.
It must’ve been a huge marketing win. Funny how now we have subscription services that include games and guides like that.
Do you think any of the promo shirts from that time still exist? Maybe sitting in some random thrift store?
Why did they give the game away for free?
Elliott said:
Why did they give the game away for free?
It was the first Dragon Quest game brought to the west. Nintendo and Enix really wanted to make it a hit, so they went all out on promotion. Jeremy Parish did a good video about this on YouTube (search for ‘NES Works: Dragon Warrior’).
@Blake
Thanks for the info, I’ll check that out.
My mom got the subscription for me as a surprise, so I didn’t know about the promo. When the game showed up, I was floored. I didn’t get far because it was too tough for me at the time, but I’ll always remember fighting my first slime. Gonna ask her how she even heard about it. Thanks for reminding me of this!
We had a Nintendo Power subscription, but I don’t think we got this promo. Probably because we’re Canadian.
That was a day to remember for a lot of us.
Nobody in my family got a copy. We must’ve missed out somehow.