Like other main games in the
Dragon Quest series,
Yuji Horii wrote the story for
Dragon Quest II,
Akira Toriyama did the artwork, and
Koichi Sugiyama composed the music. Co-creator
Koichi Nakamura,
Chunsoft's president, directed the game and did half of the programming. Planning for
Dragon Quest II began in April 1986, a month before the release of the original
Dragon Quest. With the system and
memory map decided, they started development in early July. Then the development team was divided into two groups, with one designing the story, as well as the monsters, and one doing the programming. The development team had finished programming almost everything by the time of the initial release and believed the game could be released by the end of that year. In the Japanese magazine
Weekly Shōnen Jump, published on November 11, 1986, it was announced that the game would be released in late December. However, the developers found that the game was too difficult, so it was delayed for a month to adjust the balance. They had to finish the final version in mid-December, In the story group, monsters were the first thing designed. The monsters' names, skills, and personalities were decided first, after which they were drawn by artist Akira Toriyama. Yuji Horii allowed Toriyama to paint full drawings rather than directly create the
pixel art that would be shown in the game. The artwork was then converted into computer graphics; as Toriyama was unfamiliar with computer graphics technology, other staff took charge of this. Many new monsters needed to be designed to make the game feel real, and the process was laborious for Toriyama. But he has also said that, compared to the
manga comics he was used to, he enjoyed painting more, so on balance the experience was positive. Yuji Horii stated that for his process, like other manga and film creators, he quickly outlines the story's plot in his mind. With regard to map design, a blank map was used to create the physical shape of the place, like a castle, cave, or tower, and then the key elements and story were created together afterwards. The scenarios were mainly written by his friend Hiroshi Miyaoka. Compared with write lines in writing paper and design map in graph paper, staff wrote both two in 5 mm graph papers of A4, as they felt that was easy for organizing; Compared with its predecessor, the game was more advanced in nearly all technological aspects. Since the students were unfamiliar with the coding process, they did not know how to debug or to keep track of whose code it came from, so Nakamura had to do it himself, which caused delays. In programming, they did the maps first. Then they worked on characters, including numbered characters in maps for assigned lines, and designed the NPC's moving route. The next step was programming the items, while the final step was setting the monsters data and converting Toriyama's artwork. This work was completed by the end of October. Also, the Promontory of Olivia in
Dragon Quest III was initially an idea for
Dragon Quest II. The game cartridge's ROM capacity is 1 Mbit,
1990 North American localization The North American release of the game as
Dragon Warrior II was created by Enix themselves and published in 1990. Unlike the original Japanese Famicom version, which used
passwords for
saving, the NES version used an internal
battery backup instead to record the player's progress. The dialogue of the American localization often used (intentionally) archaic English vocabulary, among other differences from the Japanese version. Like
Dragon Warrior, the American version of
Dragon Warrior II was censored in some aspects; for example, it used a ghost-like sprite instead of the original defeated character's coffin with cross sprite. On August 20, 1987, the first "Family Classic Concert" was held. In this concert,
Dragon Quest and
Dragon Quest II's music was performed by the Tokyo Strings Ensemble. Later in October 1987, the concert recording was released as a symphonic suite CD under the title
Dragon Quest in Concert. Music of
Dragon Quest II were also released as a piano CD, a
Drama CD and several Symphonic Suite albums.
Dragon Quest II's musics were also collected in music compilations, like
Symphonic Suite Dragon Quest Best Selection Vol.1 ~Roto~ (1997),
Dragon Quest Game Music Super Collection Vol. 1–
3 (2001–2002),
Symphonic Suite Dragon Quest Complete CD-Box (2003) and
Symphonic Suite Dragon Quest Scene-Separated I~IX (2011). "Only Lonely Boy", the background music in the game's name and password input interface, was arranged as a vocal promotional song and released as a single by
Anna Makino named “Love Song Sagashite”. Since the sequel takes place 100 years after the original
Dragon Quest, Sugiyama decided to use pop music to suggest the game took place at a later time than the previous game. This music is also used for
Japan professional baseball team
Chiba Lotte Marines'
fight song. The song that is played when wandering the fields of
Dragon Quest, "Unknown World", is also played when the Hero is in that area. The ending theme "My Road, My Journey" is also the ending song of related anime
Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai.
Remakes Dragon Quest II was ported to
MSX computers in February 1988, but the ported version had many issues like choppy scrolling, black-surround characters titles, poor graphics, along with sluggish combat and menus. On December 18, 1993,
Dragon Quest II was
remade and combined with
Dragon Quest as part of
Dragon Quest I & II for the
Super Famicom, which used
Dragon Quest V's engine. The Super Famicom remake was only released in Japan. In the Game Boy Color localization, the main characters' and towns' names were retranslated to be similar to the original Japanese names: The remakes size was four times bigger than the original
Dragon Quest port, and since phone capacity was limited, the game was divided into two parts. The first part was pre-installed in cell phones and the second part could be downloaded for free. The world map was provided by a pre-installed PDF file. In 2006 Japanese mobile companies
BREW and
SoftBank also started selling the game on their mobile platforms. Both the Famicom and Super Famicom versions of this game, along with
Dragon Quest and
Dragon Quest III, were re-released under the
Dragon Quest 25th Anniversary Collection compilation for the
Wii in Japan on September 15, 2011. The Wii compilation featured interruptive save functions for each games. The compilation also included original copies of the strategy guides for the games, along with original artwork and material on the games' development. This
Dragon Quest II was based on the previous cell phone version while optimized for smartphones and was released on June 26, 2014, in Japan. An English version was released on October 9, 2014, under the title
Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line. Square Enix registered this trademark in Japan in 2013, and in United States in early 2014. In the
Nintendo Direct in June 2024, a
HD-2D remake of
Dragon Quest and
II was announced, and was released on October 30, 2025, for
Microsoft Windows,
Nintendo Switch,
Nintendo Switch 2,
PlayStation 5 and
Xbox Series X/S. == Other media ==