Shiren:Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer (series)

Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer is the second entry into the Mystery Dungeon franchise and the first one to use all original characters. Shiren the Wanderer titles are primarily centered around Shiren the Wanderer and his talking weasel companion, Koppa.

About

The company wanted to work on the new features and gameplay mechanics added in NetHack, a variant of Rogue, one of them was being able to steal items from a shopkeeper. However, it was not possible to translate the new content from Nethack with characters from the Dragon Quest series; one such with Torneko who is a merchant. Two years after the release of Torneko's Great Adventure, Mystery Dungeon 2: Shiren the Wanderer was released as the company's second work for the Mystery Dungeon series, with a new world setting and unique characters. Many titles from this series were developed simultaneously throughout the years, where one title was focused on creating original features in its gameplay than the other for which they were forced to focus on "traditional dungeon types" due to the limitations on the other hardware; Mystery Dungeon 2: Shiren the Wanderer on Super Famicom and Shiren the Wanderer GB: Monster of Moonlight Village on Game Boy, and Shiren the Wanderer 2 - Shiren's Castle and the Oni Invasion on Nintendo 64 and Shiren the Wanderer GB2: Magic Castle of the Desert on Game Boy Color. An unique gameplay element that first appeared in Monster of Moonlight Village and would appear later in the Mystery Dungeon franchise and its crossovers is rescuing other players via passwords. They went with the idea of player sharing passwords instead of them using the Game Boy's Game Link Cable in order to help others since there were not many owners of the cable. This idea was expanded in Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer Gaiden - Asuka the Swordswoman with the addition of online support. Within the online support, players would receive new dungeons, called either "Weekly Dungeon"; a dungeon that can be played online on a weekly basis, or "Challenge Dungeon"; the dungeon's difficulty would be increased and useful items would appear less frequently.

The naming and numbering convention of Shiren the Wanderer games is complex due to the fact that the company has made many games (all derived upon and building upon the "Mystery Dungeon" roguelike framework) on various platforms and localized for various markets over the course of decades. For example, what players today call "Shiren 1" (the first game featuring the character Shiren) was in fact originally called "Mystery Dungeon 2", as it was the second game using the Mystery Dungeon framework. Some games were apparently numbered based on their original release platform plus their release sequence on that platform while others originally had unique titles with no numbers featured. Then, over the course of time, some but not all of these games were ported to other platforms or localized into English and sold in other markets, often under a new name as the original name or number wouldn't have made much sense in the new market. Games that were released in English were often released many years after their initial Japanese releases, even though one or newer games in the series had already been released in Japan in the intervening period. Games that were re-released on other platforms also sometimes included additional content that was not part of the first release, or that was optional downloadable content (DLC) for the first release. Fortunately for the English-speaking audience, the company seems to have bundled all DLC whenever they have localized a game into English.

To date, only three Shiren games have been officially localized into English. Note that none of the English titles uses the same numbering system as the original Japanese titles did. But lack of officially localized releases has not stopped some hardcore English-speaking fans of the series from playing other games in the series, either via imported games and struggling to play in a foreign language or via hacks, mods and player translations. Consequently, this site has more complete information for games that were officially released in English but also has content for other games in the series as well.

The name or numbering convention is so complex that English-speaking fans of the series usually use shorthand names or nicknames for the games in the series. Unfortunately, there is no single canonical short name for each game used by all players, as different audiences favored different short names based on which release or re-release they were playing. For convenience, this site uses short names based on the original release title to the greatest extent possible, otherwise, the short name is derived from the original release platform plus the sequence on that platform.

This series has also let the franchise have its first spin-off game in 2004, titled Shiren Monsters: Netsal. It is only one game based on the monsters from the Shiren the Wanderer series.

In Other Languages

Language			Name
English			Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer
日本語			不思議のダンジョン 風来のシレン
español			Mazmorra Misteriosa: Shiren el Vagabundo
한국어			이상한 던전 풍래의 시렌
中文	Simplified		千变的迷宫 风来的希炼
	Traditional		千變的迷宮 風來的希煉

References

• Wikipedia's list of Mystery Dungeon games.
• The Japanese Wikipedia page for the series.
• Discussing gameplay elements of various mobile titles.