Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of the Elusive Age has been available and been smashing sales charts in Japan for four days now, and naturally, some gamers already finished its epic quest. Square Enix kept this a secret for a good long while, but at the end of your experience, a nice, nostalgic surprise is awaiting you!
Upon beating the game, it will provide you with a password to use on the title screen. Entering this password fires up not a special feature in the main game but rather, a copy of the 8-bit original! With its crude, blocky sprites and all, Enix’s game that got it all started is there waiting for you.
It’s aged far worse than you expect, especially since this is the Japanese original release and not the advanced one that the NES got a few years later, but at least it’s there to help shed a few nostalgic beats if you enjoyed the game back in the day.
Square Enix has been really pushing the nostalgia in the marketing here in Japan, and this is a classy way to fully deliver… although most didn’t start playing Dragon Quest until Dragon Quest III in Japan. Oh well, you can’t get them all.
Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of the Elusive Age will be released in North America in 2018. No platforms have been confirmed for localization yet. It is available for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo 3DS in Japan, and a Nintendo Switch version is also expected for release.
