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I've been playing Dragon Warrior Monsters for 15 years, and I've never beaten it. It's travelled with me across the UK, across Europe, across the world. In its own weird way, it's always had its hooks in me deeper than any other game. We've got history.It was released in 1999 for the Game Boy Color, a spin-off from a JRPG series that had never made it to our shores before. It was an obvious attempt by Enix (now Square Enix) to capitalise on the explosive Pokemon craze, following a suspiciously familiar formula; a young boy captures monsters, trains them to fight, and uses them to compete in a series of escalating tournaments. The thing is... it's better. It has scope and ambition that Pokemon argurably couldn't match.
What sets Dragon Warrior Monsters apart is its bizarre and wonderful breeding system. You don't just build a team in this game, you build bloodlines, great twisted genealogies whose power grows with each generation.
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