Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest plagiarized Dungeons & Dragons
Reading some recent articles in Famitsuu, I have revised my theories about Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest plagiarizing Dungeons & Dragons in their so-called "RPGs".
Now, the way I see it is that Square and Enix both basically had copies of the Monster Manual and the Player's Handbook and so on in their respective offices; not understanding that the material within included a substantial amount of Gary Gygax's own original content (not to mention original content of others), both companies put monsters from the books into their games, and also based various rules on the books as well.
Some monsters are very obviously taken from the book; there was a pink bunny with a horn monster, for example, that was adopted into Dragon Quest (what was that called again?). In Final Fantasy I, however, there were four middle bosses, which were named:
Lich
Marilith
Kraken
Tiamat
AD&D-heads will recognize all of these - liches were not really an idea until AD&D came along and named them; Marilith was the name of an individual of a Type V Demon, and Tiamat, although originally a Babylonian deity of some sort, was the 5-headed chromatic dragon in AD&D. Looking at the monsters as shown in Final Fantasy, they look basically the same as the AD&D depictions, so it is fair to assume that they were basically plagiarized. (Not to mention, Bahamut is in the game as well, more or less like the AD&D version.)
The games' plagiarism seems to have been mostly in their earliest games; after that, they began to base their subsequent games on the "mythologies" created by their earlier games, but we cannot deny the original plagiarism that allowed them to start it all. (Certain things were plagiarized later as well, but less than before.)
Unfortunately, certain things were not quite understood in translation, such as "class" not meaning the same thing as "profession" or "job" - which is the meaning that is used in CRPGs in Japan today. This sort of mistake, as well as hardware limits that emphasized certain undesirable aspects of CRPGs in those days (such as over-used random encounters), cemented and created what we now know as Japanese CRPGs today, while CRPGs in America have continued to follow the ideal that is "role-playing."
Now, the way I see it is that Square and Enix both basically had copies of the Monster Manual and the Player's Handbook and so on in their respective offices; not understanding that the material within included a substantial amount of Gary Gygax's own original content (not to mention original content of others), both companies put monsters from the books into their games, and also based various rules on the books as well.
Some monsters are very obviously taken from the book; there was a pink bunny with a horn monster, for example, that was adopted into Dragon Quest (what was that called again?). In Final Fantasy I, however, there were four middle bosses, which were named:
Lich
Marilith
Kraken
Tiamat
AD&D-heads will recognize all of these - liches were not really an idea until AD&D came along and named them; Marilith was the name of an individual of a Type V Demon, and Tiamat, although originally a Babylonian deity of some sort, was the 5-headed chromatic dragon in AD&D. Looking at the monsters as shown in Final Fantasy, they look basically the same as the AD&D depictions, so it is fair to assume that they were basically plagiarized. (Not to mention, Bahamut is in the game as well, more or less like the AD&D version.)
The games' plagiarism seems to have been mostly in their earliest games; after that, they began to base their subsequent games on the "mythologies" created by their earlier games, but we cannot deny the original plagiarism that allowed them to start it all. (Certain things were plagiarized later as well, but less than before.)
Unfortunately, certain things were not quite understood in translation, such as "class" not meaning the same thing as "profession" or "job" - which is the meaning that is used in CRPGs in Japan today. This sort of mistake, as well as hardware limits that emphasized certain undesirable aspects of CRPGs in those days (such as over-used random encounters), cemented and created what we now know as Japanese CRPGs today, while CRPGs in America have continued to follow the ideal that is "role-playing."