Dragon Quest IV

Dragon Quest IV offered several new features over the first three titles, while carrying on many of those introduced in the previous games. Similar features included are the day and night cycles, the ability to travel via ship and a flying vehicle (this time, a hot air balloon), and the three levels of keys. They are Thief, Magic and Ultimate (originally localized as Final). There are also travel doors, which allow the party to move a great distance on the world map with little travel.

Unlike the Hero in Dragon Warrior III, the Hero of Dragon Quest IV is not required to be in the party at all once the wagon becomes available. Despite this, the Hero is again the character that possesses the most powerful healing and attack spells. Many spells, weapons, armor, and shops (including the vault/bank) function the same as in past games.

In the original version, the game is divided into five chapters. The first four provide back-story for the Hero's party members, while the fifth follows the Hero themself as they meet up with the other characters.

Chapter One follows the soldier, Ragnar McRyan, who is tasked by the King of Burland to find children who have gone missing from a nearby town, befriending a Healslime named Healie, who aspires to become human. Ragnar finds and defeats the monster responsible for the abductions and returns the children to their homes. In doing so, he learns the monsters were looking for the Legendary Hero, who is supposedly still a child, in order to kill them. Ragnar decides to leave his home and set out on a quest to protect them.

According to Yuji Horii, he wanted to have something the player went around collecting as the previous Dragon Quest games had crests and orbs respectively. However, he did not want to do the same thing over again by forcing the player to collect a certain number of items before they beat the game; mini medals instead have nothing to do with clearing the game. The promotional illustrations for the Japanese version were drawn by famed manga artist Akira Toriyama, who provided the artwork for the previous games in the series and would continue to do so for every future installment.

Unlike all the other games up to this point, the changes in this version were not as radical. Among them were the usual religious/violence censorship, new graphics for the opening copyright and ending credits, and the betting in the Casino was slightly modified to allow more money being won during a bet.

Upon release in Japan, the game sold out 1.3 million cartridges and grossed ¥14 billion ($98 million at the time, or $242 million adjusted for inflation) within one hour of its release. By 1992, it had sold 3 million units in Japan. The original Famicom version went on to sell 3.1 million units, becoming the fourth best-selling game of the system, below its predecessor Dragon Quest III. The original game sold a worldwide total of 3.18 million copies, including 3.1 million in Japan and 80,000 in the United States, grossing several hundred million dollars by 1993 ($740 million adjusted for inflation).

The PlayStation version of Dragon Quest IV was the fourth best-selling game in Japan in 2001 with over 1 million copies sold, and has sold nearly 1.2 million copies as of December 26, 2004. As of August 8, 2008, the DS remake has sold 1.15 million units in Japan, and 1.46 million copies worldwide as of May 31, 2009.