is a series of

roguelike Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing computer games traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player charac ...

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

s. Most of the titles were developed by Chunsoft; other titles were developed by different companies with permission from Chunsoft to use the trademark.

Koichi Nakamura is a Japanese video game designer. A programming prodigy, Nakamura gained fame while still in high school; in 1982, he entered Enix's first national programming contest and claimed runner-up prize with his entry, ''Door Door''. In 1984, he found ...

, founder of Chunsoft and co-creator of the '' Dragon Quest'' series, conceived the ''Mystery Dungeon'' series as Chunsoft's first original work, basing the design on the game '' Rogue''. Most ''Mystery Dungeon'' games center on exploring a dungeon with randomly generated layouts and fighting other characters in those dungeons in a

turn-based In video and other games, the passage of time must be handled in a way that players find fair and easy to understand. This is usually done in one of the two ways: real-time and turn-based. Real-time Real-time games have game time progress cont ...

manner; every time the player performs an action, such as attacking or walking, the opponents also take action. The first game, '' Torneko no Daibōken: Fushigi no Dungeon'' (1993), stars Torneko, a shopkeeper character from Chunsoft's ''

Dragon Quest IV ''Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen'', titled ''Dragon Warrior IV'' when initially localized to North America, is a role-playing video game, the fourth installment of the ''Dragon Quest'' video game series developed by Chunsoft and publishe ...

''. The games of the ''Mystery Dungeon'' series can be largely divided into five groups: those related to the ''Dragon Quest'' series; the ''Shiren the Wanderer'' series; those related to the ''

Chocobo The is a fictional species created for the ''Final Fantasy'' franchise by Square Enix (originally Square). A galliform bird commonly having yellow feathers, they were first introduced in ''Final Fantasy II'' (1988), and have since featured in ...

'' series, itself a spin-off of the ''

Final Fantasy is a Japanese video game, Japanese science fantasy anthology media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi and developed and owned by Square Enix (formerly Square (video game company), Square). The franchise centers on a series of fantasy and ...

'' series; those related to the '' Pokémon'' franchise; and individual spin-off games of other franchises. Of the games, only the ''Shiren'' series are based on original characters rather than those of other franchises. The ''Mystery Dungeon'' games have had varying levels of success. Of them, the ''Pokémon'' games have had the biggest impact, with the first game in the subseries selling millions of copies. ''Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon'' also sold over one million copies.

Games

''Dragon Quest'' series

''Shiren the Wanderer'' series

''Chocobo'' series

''Pokémon'' series

''Etrian Odyssey'' series

Individual releases

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mystery Dungeon video games Final Fantasy * Lists of video games by franchise