How ironic. The Game Boy Color market is rapidly fading away, and Enix releases quite possibly the best game on the system...and it’s an RPG...and it’s rated Teen. Dragon Warrior III for GBC is a spectacular remake (and retranslation) of arguably the best NES quest ever. Even somewhat rushing through the game and having played the original all the way through, the portable DWIII took over my life for thirty-plus gameplay hours.

Despite being technically brilliant and fresh as hell, Dragon Warrior III is extremely traditional as compared to most modern RPGs. It’s all about knights, clerics, mages, dragons, kings, and armor. Unlike some of the recent Final Fantasy games, it does actually matter (A LOT) what level you’re at, and having the best equipment can make all the difference in the world. That leads to another interesting aspect of DWIII as compared to newer games...money is scarce, and you need tons of it to stay properly equipped.

The plot is fairly simple, but it has a few twists and does provide adequate motivation for you to keep on trucking through the incredibly long quest. The core storyline, that of a young hero searching for his father and trying to vanquish the world from an evil demon, is handled eloquently; more importantly, it is emphasized throughout your adventure, not just at the beginning and end. Also...I don’t want to give anything away, but those of you who played Dragon Warrior I&II will be delighted with some of the references and locations later on.

Although the third and fourth Dragon Warrior games were some of the NES’s prettiest, DWIII’s visuals have been significantly upgraded for its port to the GBC. Many of the sprites and backgrounds have new details, and there are a few high-color backgrounds thrown in that of course weren’t even possible on Nintendo’s other 8-bit system. But of course, all the hype belongs to the battle animations, and deservedly so. The turn-based battles are carried out from a first-person view, which let the artists and animators devote all their energies to the enemies and spell effects...and boy did they. Each type of enemy (some are re-used with palette swaps) has at least two battle animations, generally one for physical attacks and one for magic. These animations range from a simple claw swipe to a metal slime actually bouncing towards the screen and ramming into you. As a whole, they are the game’s most impressive and entertaining visual element, and they are in fact better than most animation routines we’ve seen thus far on Game Boy Advance software. Really.

Unbelievably, the sound is right on par with the amazing eye-candy. All of the music from the NES game has been recreated, and most of it sounds noticeably better through headphones than they did through my old TV and RF Switch setup. The strength of the franchise’s music is lavishly displayed, and fans of any DW game will be in nostalgia heaven at one point or another. I should also note that the battle sound effects are great and surprisingly varied, a feature that simply can’t be appreciated through the system’s own speaker.

If you’re looking for a lot of value in your RPGs, DWIII really hits the mark. It has a really, really long quest (or two quests, depending on your perspective), and at no point have I gotten tired of it and considered just quitting altogether. The fact that the story and gameplay remain compelling (ravenously so, on my weaker days) after more than thirty hours of playing says a ton about the game’s balance and pacing. Let me put it this way: I’ve got new GBA games that’ve hardly been touched in over a month, thanks to Dragon Warrior III. (And my apologies to the publishers of those games...blame Enix!)

DWIII’s depth and quality easily put it on par with current GBA selections. When played in the Advance, the “stretch” mode looks okay in some situations, blah in others. Also, you should know that the game is not specifically prepared for play on the GBA (like some recent GBC titles from Nintendo are), so the game does look a bit darker than on the GBC’s screen. The vibrant colors look even richer and sometimes superior in this condition, but some tiny details are harder to pick out, and you’ll need a very ample light source. If you have both systems, it’s probably best to play DWIII on Ol’ Betsy...er, I mean the Game Boy Color. Still, the game is very much playable and enjoyable on the Advance if that’s your only choice.

Jonathan Metts, Senior Editor