Mystery Dungeon is a series of roguelikevideo games, most of which were developed by Chunsoft, with select titles in the series developed by other companies with Chunsoft's permission. The series began when co–creator of Dragon Quest, Koichi Nakamura, was inspired by a fellow developer's experience with the video gameRogue and a desire to create an original series. The franchise has had games across different platforms, starting on the Super Famicom, and later on, among others, the Game Boy, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Wii, Nintendo 3DS and as of 2020, the Nintendo Switch. The series has inspired similar titles in Japan, most of which appropriate their games' mechanics from Mystery Dungeon rather than Rogue itself. The series has had moderate popularity, and has found most of its success with the and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series, and to a lesser extent the Chocobo games.
Games
Although all games in the series bear the Fushigi no Dungeon moniker somewhere in their Japanese titles, only the Shiren the Wanderer games contain original characters; all other license their characters from other role-playing game franchises. The first title, ' starred Torneko, a shopkeeper character from the same developer's '. Mystery Dungeon games are notable for being among the few console games in the roguelike genre. Chunsoft has also started several lines of branded Mystery Dungeon games: one featuring the Chocobo from the Final Fantasy series, then later featuring TwinBee, Tower of Druaga, Pokémon, Etrian Odyssey and One Way Heroics being the latest crossover as of 2015. The Chocobo games have been noted for further simplifying the genre's difficulty to appeal to a wider and younger audience.
Spin-offs
The franchise had its first spin-off games in 2004 with Shiren Monsters. It is a collection of two games based on the monsters from the Shiren the Wanderer series.
Gameplay
Most Mystery Dungeon games centre around exploring a dungeon with randomly generated layouts and fighting other characters therein in a turn-based manner; every time the player performs an action such as attacking or walking, the opponents also take action. Chunsoft itself described the gameplay as being like chess. Escape from the dungeon is usually only allowed in certain places, or through the use of certain items. Additionally, when the player loses the game the player loses all money plus half the player's items in the more forgiving variants, or loses everything and has to start from scratch in others. An effort has also been made to expand the series gameplay features, such as adding job systems to some titles, and giving each dungeon a different feel and goal. Features distinct to the Shiren the Wanderer series include the "Melding Jar" which allows players to synthesize items and weapons into more powerful ones.
Development
Koichi Nakamura, founder of Chunsoft and co-creator of the Dragon Quest series, conceived the series as Chunsoft's first original work. After the launch of the Super Famicom, they ceased working on the Dragon Quest series and began working on the Mystery Dungeon series. The series was based on the gameRogue. For a week Nakamura played Rogue at the recommendation of a staff member, trying to understand the game's appeal, and concluded the high degree of challenge made the game very rewarding. Nakamura explained that the appeal of the Mystery Dungeon series is that every game is different, players skills are constantly being challenged, and helps the player feel deeply involved. Seiichiro Nagahata, who supervised and planned the development of Shiren the Wanderer DS, explained that the Mystery series is all about "tension" and "reasoning".
Music
While the franchise is divided with numerous crossovers, the majority of its soundtracks were composed by Dragon Quest fame composers Koichi Sugiyama and Hayato Matsuo for the Dragon Quest crossovers and Shiren the Wanderer series. Other composers such as Yuzo Koshiro for the Etrian Odyssey crossover or Keisuke Ito and Arata Iiyoshi for the Pokémon crossover have frequently contributed in the franchise.
Reception
The Shiren the Wanderer series has generally favorable ratings in Japan and throughout the world. Famitsu awarded a 36/40 to Demon Invasion! Shiren Castle! and a 38/40 to the original release of , the highest score the publication had given to a game on the Game Boy Color library. The series has been both praised and criticized for its difficulty, and generally noted for the uneven quality of the randomly generated levels, or "floors", the games produce.
Sales
The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series is known to have high sale rates in the franchise with surpassing one millon copies for most of their games like ' and its remake ' and ' alone. ' was the 18th best selling game in Japan in 2012, selling over 373,000 copies. The Chocobo series is thought to have had middling success, with strong launch sales but not a huge popular response.
