During the 1990s, the
computer role-playing game genre became famous in Japan due to the success of the
Dragon Quest series. However, most of the roguelike games that were published for PC used to not have a Japanese translation; the genre's recognition remained low in result. While following the basic game system of roguelike games, other companies tried to bring the genre into a
home console. Two of the earliest-known attempts were
Sega's
Fatal Labyrinth and
Dragon Crystal, both games released in 1990, but which lacked the depth of a typical computer-based roguelike. Neither proved to be successful games.
Dragon Quest After the launch of the Super Famicom and finishing development for
Dragon Quest V, the company ceased working on the
Dragon Quest series and began working on the
Mystery Dungeon series. Even if it sold less than the series' main titles, the game has sold over 800,000 copies. Koichi Nakamura conceived the series as Chunsoft's first original work. The game spawned two sequels starring Torneko,
Torneko: The Last Hope in 1999 and
Dragon Quest Characters: Torneko no Daibōken 3 in 2002, and a follow-up,
Dragon Quest: Shōnen Yangus to Fushigi no 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.
Shiren the Wanderer 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 no Daibōken,
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. The success of the first game in Japan helped key employees that participated in the aforementioned game's development return to work on the series' future titles throughout the years, such as character artist
Kaoru Hasegawa, supervisor Seiichiro Nagahata, A unique gameplay element that first appeared in
Magic Castle of the Desert and would appear later in the
Mystery Dungeon franchise and its crossovers is rescuing other players via passwords. They went with this idea instead of using the Game Boy's
Game Link Cable because there were not many owners of the cable. This idea was expanded in
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.
Chocobo The ''Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon
series is fully developed and published by Square Enix, then SquareSoft before the merging with Enix. However, Nakamura has supervised the first two games and was the producer for Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon, before Hironobu Sakaguchi took the place for Chocobo's Dungeon 2. Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon
would become the first title to be released in the Chocobo
sub-series, while Chocobo's Dungeon 2
became the first Mystery Dungeon
title to be released outside of Japan. Starting in Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon'', some of the more difficult game elements were removed so that it would appeal to "small children and female" players.
Pokémon Tsunekazu Ishihara had worked previously with Chunsoft with
Tetris 2 + BomBliss as the producer, and met Nakamura, who was the game's director. Prior to the development of
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red and Blue Rescue Team, Ishihara had played a few games from the
Mystery Dungeon series, namely ''Torneko's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon'', and was impressed with the genre's depth and quality. The game's development started after Nagahata and Tomie approached Ishihara and agreed to work on an easier version of the genre for the mainline
Pokémon fans. During the development of
Red and Blue Rescue Team, Kouji Malta, one of the programmers for these two games, who had contributed previously on
EarthBound and
Shiren the Wanderer 2, stated the company went through bad business performance, as employees from Chunsoft would leave the company progressively due to this issue. The game's success not only helped gain more popularity for the franchise, it also helped Chunsoft to avoid bankruptcy. The widespread success of the first game helped creating a spin-off series, with it selling over 10 million copies four years after its first titles were released in Japan. Unlike the
Dragon Quest branch, it does not have a linear timeline between the mainline
Pokémon franchise and this series so newcomers would be introduced easily into the series and the genre.
Etrian Odyssey The game was developed by Spike Chunsoft and Atlus, the latter being the developers of the
Etrian Odyssey series, with most of the actual development done at Spike Chunsoft, while Atlus acted as supervisors. During development, both the companies would continuously share their most recent data on a shared
server, and discuss details of the game direction using an instant messaging program; additionally, they would hold weekly meetings during which they made various arrangements for the game, and every month during development, Spike Chunsoft would send their latest playable build to Atlus, who would check the direction the game was going in. ==Music==