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by dingnuts 875 days ago
I keep seeing this claim repeated without a citation. I just looked at Wikipedia and could not find any examples, except as it pertains to Dragon Quest Monsters, which does seem similar to Pokemon, but came out in 1998, after Pokemon. Regular Dragon Quest -- which I have not played -- looks like a normal JRPG like Final Fantasy. Dragon Quest Monsters appears to be a monster collector, but the timeline (as mentioned) is wrong.

Care to provide any evidence for this claim? I'm starting to think this is another case of "Kimba the White Lion is a ripoff of The Lion King" and someone is going to have to make a 2.5 hr long YouTube video debunking the Internet's idea that Pokemon is a ripoff of Dragon Quest.

2 comments

This is the picture going around that this claim seems to be based on. Not a JRPG guy, so I can't tell you which game those DQ designs are from or when they actually debuted, but that doesn't seem to be stopping people from accepting it at face value. https://twitter.com/kelskiYT/status/1749243751460188233
the original dragon quest (and also dragon quest 2, which came out before pokemon) still had monsters in it, whose designs were blatantly ripped off by pokemon. the source is the game, feel free to go check out some dragon quest 1/2 gameplay and look at the monsters.
Scrolled through this longplay and the closest one I could find was Golem, which bears some similarity to James Turner's design for Golurk from Gen V, I suppose (in that they are both stone bipeds). Is that what you're referring to? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmzHrNVelL0
one of several examples, yeah. off the top of my head i can think of dracky, chewlip, cobra kaiser, and bubble slime, but there are lots of others.
I can see a resemblance to Golbat in Dracky, but not sure where you're going with the others.
in that case you must not too familiar with pokemon? chewlip = victreebel/gloom for design and colour scheme respectively, cobra kaiser = arbok, bubble slime = grimer/muk
I mean that I don't look at any of those monsters and get that "oh wow that's obviously just a _____" reaction like I do when I see this green Cinderace. https://twitter.com/byofrog/status/1748890830495010870

If you think "large snake" is on the same level as that, you are free to hold that opinion.