Dragon Warrior Monsters

To do: What are the differences between the two revisions of the Japanese game?

Dragon Warrior Monsters lets you collect a bunch of those Dragon Warrior monsters and hybridize them into horribly broken killing machines. Notably, this was the first title in the series to be released in Europe - finally!

Debug Mode#

A Debug Mode can be activated in all versions by using the GameShark code 01078AC8 or Game Genie code 071-7EF-E6A.

Turning on the code actually opens the skill animation test submenu. To access the main Debug Mode menu properly, you must press B, turn off the code, and press A - this exits you out of the submenu without causing a freeze, and you'll now be in the GOTO PROGRAM menu. Do whatever you want in here, or press B again to exit to the main Debug Mode menu.

Overall, Debug Mode is a bit unstable and several options don't seem to work quite as intended.

Alternately, changing byte 017E in the rom from 00 to 07 will make the debug menu start on game boot. The game can still be played normally by selecting 'Return'. This mitigates most of the issues caused by using a gameshark.

1:GOTO PROGRAM#

This menu allows setting the game to one of the handful of different modes the game can be in. This gives access to a few different debug options such as viewing battle animations, looking at monster walksprites and watching some otherwise-unused battle tutorials. This screen wasn't fully localised in the English translation so it's a bit funky-looking and some of the options take their name from the wrong string of text. The Japanese and German versions don't have these issues.

• TITLE ~1 jumps to the title screen; changing PRGNO1 changes which title screen is chosen ("licensed by Nintendo", Eidos, Enix, the game logo).
• GAME jumps to the main gameplay loop; depending on how you accessed the debug menu this may result in you having no monsters in your party.
• BATTLE brings you into a battle using your current party, but the battle parameters aren't set so the opposition is a random number of DrakSlime.
• EVTDEMO shows one of the cutscenes; you can choose which one (the earthquake during the day from after you complete the Gate of Anger, the earthquake during the night from after you beat S class in the arena, the Starry Night) by changing the value of PRGNO1.
• ENEMY (meant to be STAFF) jumps to the credits.
• EFFECT brings up a battle animation test. (Like the previous menu, this is a bit funky-looking.) You can choose an enemy monster and watch what it looks like when various skills are used on it. The top option seems to be different sorts of slowly-animated screen effects, such as shaking and blackouts (navigate with Right / Left and press A to view.) The bottom options are skill animation (navigate ID numbers with Right / Left and press A to view), enemy view toggle (Right / Left to toggle), and enemy species (Right / Left to go through IDs).
• MONSTR1 (meant to be RESULT) seems to be the multiplayer results screen; since memory isn't initialised, it just shows "You Win!" and kicks you back to the main game menu.
• DEBUG ~2 goes to the main Debug Mode menu.
• The second MONSTR1 (meant to be OBJTEST) shows monster walking sprites; once again the background is a bit funky in the English-language release. The top option lets you turn the monster around with the D-Pad until you press B, while the bottom lets you change the displayed monster species (000-214). Exiting out of the sprite viewer resets the game.
• NO MORE. initiates an unused tutorial with a WhiteKing who introduces himself as "Grandpa Sakamoto" and explains what each menu option does in a battle, then resets the game.
• MONSTR2L shows another similar (and similarly unused) tutorial.

Every option afterward crashes the game due to indexing a jump table out of bounds.

2:MONSTER#

Just lets you view the big monster sprites, along with their names.

3:GAME EDIT#

This is sort of two menus in one. Depending on what you set as MAPTYPE, you can either teleport yourself to any regular map (NORMAL) or test a randomly-generated dungeon (ACREATE). With MAPTYPE set to NORMAL, the FLOOR option lets you choose between the available areas by name. When it's set to ACREATE, FLOOR chooses which scenario you're dumped into (e.g. the dungeon that ends in seeing a princess and Dragon, or the FaceTree forest, or the MadCat dungeon, etc.)

The next two options seem broken - ALLY is probably supposed to let you set the number of party members you have, from 00-03, but it seems to default to zero if you aren't using the DEBUG option as well. MONSTR1-3 is probably supposed to let you choose the monster types that will appear in a dungeon but it doesn't seem to work, and sometimes instead fills the dungeon with Watabou and/or Slimes. DUMMY's function is unknown.

Setting DEBUG to anything besides 00 has an interesting effect - your party and farm will be filled with randomized monsters (species / level / nickname / wildness / parents are all random for each), your name will be changed, your inventory will consist of nine random items, and you'll be given 87040 gold.

Pressing Start will save the selections you made here and put you back into the main game with your choices applied.

4:SOUND TEST#

Exactly as labeled. Lets you listen to any music or sound effect in the game.

5:BATTLE EDIT#

Lets you set up a test battle. ENEMY lets you set 000-002 enemies (1-3). The way monster selection here works is pretty awkward. The first of each MONSTER pairs determines the enemy's species. The second of each pair sort of determines what your party members' species are? Maybe? This part is really hard to understand. Either way, your party is very random and the debug effects used in the GAME EDIT menu seem to apply here (given a bunch of items, money, etc.) DUMMY seems to not do anything. If you lose the battle, you show up in front of the king of GreatTree, if you win, you just appear wherever you were in-game prior to battle testing.

- RETURN -#

Restarts the game.

Message Debug#

The message debugger can be opened from any other debug menu by pressing Select, and closed by pressing Start.

NOTE: The message debugger is only available in non-Japanese versions of the game.

There are a total of 10 pages, each with 4 options. Select the message you'd like to see with the d-pad, and view it with B. Go to the next page with Select

The message types are as follows:

TESTMES#

Displays some of the debug menu text, but is very buggy. Parts of the menu graphics get overwritten as messages are displayed.

DEBUGNAME#

Text for the Game Edit menu noted above.

SYSMES#

As the name suggests, contains system messages such as those about the Journal, picking up items, naming monsters, etc... If it seems like the game is talking to you, it's here.

MNAMEMES#

Lists the names that autofill the monster naming screen if you end with it blank.

KEITOUMES#

Displays monster type icons.

SYUZOKUMES#

Displays the species names of each monster.

TOKUGINAME#

Tokugi means 'Special Skill' and that's exactly what this shows. Specifically the names of each skill.

SYUNAME#

Displays the two letter abbreviations for each monster name, used for the monster naming screen as the default name.

ITEMNAME#

The names of each item, in order of index number.

ITEMMES#

Descriptions of each item, again, in order of index number.

SEIKAKUMES#

Displays the monster personality types.

BTLWINMES#

As well as the messages shown after winning a battle, this one contains the in-battle menu text, and a few corrupted lines of text as well.

BATTLEMES#

Contains two copies of the error handler text, Watabou appears out of nowhere! Watabou disappears!

ITEMMES2#

Displays the messages shown after using an item.

TOKUGUMES2#

Displays the messages shown after using a skill.

KAIWAMES00-09#

All of the in-game text like that from NPCs, cutscenes, and examining objects.

BTLMES-BTLMES3#

Four sequential banks of battle related text. If you can see it in battle, it's here!

BTLCMD#

Seems to be broken. Repeats "OOOOOOOO takes out the BeastTail!" on every 'valid' value.

BTLMES4#

Displays the last 4 battle messages. The first is the same as BTLCMD's message, while the others are about whether you have or haven't been pals with a monster yet.

STAFFMES0#

Job titles from the end credits.

STAFFMES1#

Staff names from end credits.

ENDINGMES#

"...TOBECONTINUED"

MONHAIMES#

Displays valid breeding pairs.

MONINFMES#

Displays information about each species of monster.

TOKUGIMES#

Displays skill descriptions.

DEMOMES00#

Displays battle tutorial messages.

DEMONAME00#

Displays either the name "Slio" or the sentence "Grandpa Sakamoto is here!" and that is it.

BOOKMES00#

Seems to be a duplicate of the tutorial messages.

OBJTMES00#

Only one valid option. Displays "Direction No."

Unused Gate Encounters#

Two gates were apparently intended to be larger and then cut down, and thus have unused encounter data for floors below the final floor in the gate.

Unused Gate#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Is there a better way to access this Gate? Is there really no boss, or is this caused by the method of access?

There is data in the ROM for a thirtysecond Gate. It has 99 floors, but upon reaching the bottom there is no boss. The only known way to access it is to enter a Gate, activate the GameShark code 011F35C9 and enter the hole to the next floor.

Unused Text#

The Medal Man collects otherwise useless TinyMedal items, and gives you monster eggs once you reach certain thresholds. In the final game there are four rewards: a ZapBird, a Trumpeter, a Spikerous and a Metabble. However, unused data suggests that at some point in development a ChopClown egg was included in between the Trumpeter and Spikerous.

Regional Differences#

The Japanese, German, and English versions of the game all have different intro and title screens. The Japanese version starts off showing the Dragon Quest series' logo in red, then replaces it with a fancy blue Dragon Quest Monsters logo overlaid in katakana. The German version keeps the Dragon Quest name and logo, but swaps the intro/title colors and just adds "MONSTERS" as a subtitle along with the copyright info. The English version keeps the color changes but replaces the Dragon Quest logo with a Dragon Warrior one, also replacing the ™ with a ®.