Torneko 1:Torneko's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon

Torneko's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon トルネコの大冒険 不思議のダンジョン
Information Developer(s) Chunsoft Publisher(s) Chunsoft Platform(s) Super Famicom Genre(s) Role-playing video game, Roguelike Mode(s) Single player Version 1.0
Credits Director(s) Tadashi Fukuzawa Producer(s) Koichi Nakamura Designer(s) Yuji Horii Kumiko Harada Programmer(s) Takenori Yamamori Artist(s) Akira Toriyama Writer(s) Yuji Horii Composer(s) Koichi Sugiyama
Release date(s) September 19, 1993
Additional info Media / distribution 16MB SFC Cartridge

“	The RPG that can be played thousands of times! 1000回遊べるRPG!	„
	~ Torneko's Great Adventure's tagline from the box art. The quote would be later used for many titles related to the Mystery Dungeon series.

Torneko's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon (Japanese: トルネコの大冒険 不思議のダンジョン) is a spin-off game based on Dragon Quest Ⅳ: Chapters of the Chosen. It was developed and published by Chunsoft for the Super Famicom in 1993. It is the first set of the Dragon Quest Mystery Dungeon series as well as the very first Mystery Dungeon game to be released, succeeding with the creation of the series.

The game features Torneko, a merchant first encountered in the third chapter of Dragon Quest Ⅳ, where he wishes to make his store famous by venturing through mystery dungeons so he could retrieve valuable items to stock in his store.

Gameplay

The gameplay is similar to roguelike-style PC games. The main similarity is the heavy use of randomized dungeons and effects. The main character of the game is Torneko, originally localized as Taloon in North America, a merchant and playable character from Dragon Quest Ⅳ. The player continues his story from Dragon Quest IV, where he wishes to make his store famous and ventures into mystery dungeons to retrieve items to stock in his store.

While Torneko explores the dungeons, he collects items and fights monsters, similar to ones found in Dragon Quest games. If he leaves the dungeon, he can sell off the items he found. He can also equip certain items. By saving up money, he can improve his home and shop.

Development

Torneko was developed by Chunsoft, the developers for the first five Dragon Quest games. It was the first game in the Mystery Dungeon series of roguelike games, of which over 25 have been produced, including five Dragon Quest spin-offs. A PAL prototype originating in Germany was unearthed, proving that it was far in development. Tasked with creating one of the first “rogue-like” games for a console instead of a PC, Dragon Quest programmer Koichi Nakamura initially asked for permission to use the ‘’Dragon Quest’’ games as the template. Letting players explore a familiar setting was part of lowering the difficulty and attempting to broaden the appeal of the genre.

One major change from the normal ‘’Dragon Quest’’ game was the replacement of the hero, who normally had a grand mission to save the world, with the kind of person who would go hunting for treasure in dungeons. For this reason, Nakamura chose Torneko, the well loved shopkeeper from Dragon Quest IV, imagining that he was exploring for items to put in his shop. The “permadeath” featured in most rogue-like games, where the game starts over if the player character dies, was also softened so that the player does not completely start over, but becomes level one again and has a new dungeon to complete.

Plot

Under construction; editing is allowed and encouraged.

Music

As with other games in the Dragon Quest series, the musical score for the game was written by Koichi Sugiyama. Sony Records released the soundtrack, titled Suite Torneko's Great Adventure: Musical Chemistry, on October 21, 1993 in Japan. It contains eight arranged tracks performed by a chamber orchestra, as well as three tracks containing original game music. The album was reprinted on October 7, 2009. Two pieces of music from the game were performed by the Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra at the Game Music Concert 3, the year of the game's release.

Release

Torneko's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon was released on September 19, 1993 for the Super Famicom. The game was promoted with an exceptionally high-budget television commercial. It had a running time of 30 seconds, unusually long for Japanese commercials of the time, and consisted almost entirely of claymation footage filmed to run at 24 frames per second.

Reception

The game received a generally good rating. In November 1993, Famitsu magazine's Reader Cross Review gave the game a 9 out of 10. In 2006, the game was voted number 78 by the readers of Famitsu magazine in its top 100 games of all time.

Because of the success of the game, the latter received multiple goodies such as strategy guides, an album arrangement, mangas and more within the following months. The game spawned two sequels starring Torneko, Torneko: The Last Hope in 1999 and Dragon Quest Characters: Torneko's Great Adventure 3: Mystery Dungeon in 2002, and a follow-up, Dragon Quest: Young Yangus and the Mysterious Dungeon in 2006, where Torneko would appear as a cameo instead of the protagonist. And indeed, the game became the first of the over thirty Mystery Dungeon rogue-like series.. Eventually, it later received an indirect sequel that would spin the Mystery Dungeon series into its own franchise in 1995, titled Mystery Dungeon 2: Shiren the Wanderer.

Sales

While the game was not as popular as the mainline Dragon Quest series, it was well received with over 800,000 copies sold in total, only in Japan.

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Gallery

For this subject's image gallery, see Torneko's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon.

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  Super Famicom cover art.

In other language

Language			Name
Japanese			トルネコの大冒険 不思議のダンジョン, Torneko's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon
Korean			톨네코의 대모험 이상한던전 (Unofficial)
Simplified Chinese			特鲁尼克大冒险 不思议的迷宫 (Unofficial)