Unreleased SNES Dragon Quest prototype could be "lost for good" as the only alleged copy of the 1993 JRPG worth $50,000 was sold to a private collector

The Dragon Quest series has been through countless iterations and spin-offs, but one version might be properly lost for good. 

Dragon's Quest's first side step was Torneko's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon, an SNES game in which you collect items in randomized dungeons as the merchant from Dragon Quest 4. Despite being a success, the game never saw a proper release or translation outside of Japan. 

Whispers about an official, unreleased English version called Taloon's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon have been floating around the internet for decades, though. SNES Central (RIP) mentioned the shadowy project years ago, according to the website's archives. In an old interview with Nintendo Age's eZine, game counselor Tom Kirstenson also mentioned that he playtested the localized version while it was still in development and apparently loved it. 

That brings us up to the modern age, where a now-delisted eBay seller claimed to have had a copy of Taloon's Great Adventure and wanted to offload it for €50,000 (or around $53,000). An archived listing includes screenshots from the game, pictures of the cartridge, and claims that the prototype "comes from a former Nintendo employee who had access to Product Analysis," the department that was responsible for Nintendo's internal quality assurance. "The prototype was in private possession for a good 20 years and was never publicly exhibited or given away."

The listing stretches as far back as 2022, but it seems like the seller did eventually find someone who matched the whopping price tag. YouTuber sackchief recently tweeted that he'd been in contact with the seller, who now "claims he sold it to a private collector so you can say it's lost for good."

"And yes, I did try negotiating since this game is not worth 50k," he continues. "I offered to crowdfund up to 2.5k for the game and a friend of mine even offered 5 thousand and we both got turned down in the end. So you can't say I didn’t try." 

It looks like the long-running mystery will only continue to drag on, as Square Enix and Nintendo have never publicly acknowledged that an English port was ever in development, and three decades on, the likelihood of that happening only becomes slimmer. But this all reminds me of the Nintendo PlayStation situation, where the long-rumored console prototype did eventually surface after falling into the right pair of hands. We might just need to wait a few years (or decades) before we see it. For now, there are fan translations online to tide you over.

You can still take a trip to the past with our Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake preview.