Taloon's Great Adventure

Torneco no Daibouken, also called "Taloon's Great Adventure", is a SuperFamicom spin-off of the Famicom classic, Dragon Quest IV. Because TnD-II is now slated to come to the U.S. on Playstation, we thought maybe we should get hopping on this long-running CTC project.

In DQ-IV, Taloon first appeared in his own chapter, then later joined the Hero's intrepid band of adventurers prior to the final assault against Necrosaro. In the introductory chapter, however, Taloon soon becomes weary of working for a lazy shopkeeper in a one-horse-town, so, he waves goodbye to his comely wife and spirited young son, then ventures off into the wilderness with a dream of becoming the world's pre-eminent arms merchant.

In TnD, Taloon appears even more portly when rendered in robust 16-bit graphics. The game itself appears quite "jolly", too, as Faraday would say. After a prologue of familiar scenes from Dragon Quest IV, Taloon confers with the King and his court, then repairs to the local dungeon, intent on grappling with the denizens therein and adding to his already considerable personal fortune.

If Taloon is defeated, however, the monsters will physically pick him up and dump him unceremoniously onto the overworld turf. It's absolutely hilarious! Even worth losing a time or two just to enjoy this zany scene (use a save-state). In this same lighthearted mood, we are striving to bring players yet another high quality amateur English translation of a Japanese videogame.

Produced by Chun Soft in 1993, the TnD design team combined action-RPG and adventure elements with the dungeon-crawler, treasure hunting format. While not intending to embellish the wildly popular DQ series (in Japan) per se, Chun Soft may have borrowed Taloon from Enix merely to draw players from an established market.

If so, the ploy must have worked, because two sequels followed, including "Fuurai no Shiren" for the Super Famicom (The Vagabond's Ordeal), and "Chocobo's Dungeon" for the PSX. Taloon wasn't featured in these latter two games, but TnD-II will certainly remedy this situation! Taloon's penchant for spelunking certainly dovetails nicely with the dungeon theme.

• The Bonus Dungeon Naming Bug: Taloon consists of three separate dungeon scenarios, (1) The Trial Dungeon, (2) the Main Dungeon, and (3) the Bonus Dungeon. In the Bonus Dungeon, initially found medicines and scrolls are not labeled with their usual nomenclatures, as they were in the first two dungeons, but instead given the temporary names of colors and animals. Part of Taloons's increased challenge in the Bonus Dungeon is to identify the function of these mysterious new items. This can be done by experimentation through random usage, or in the usual way by reading Identity Scrolls (once he has properly identified those mysterious items!).


• As an interim step, the developers designed a (re)naming feature, but using it freezes the game, at present. The workaround, for now, is to bypass the naming feature and use just the other two techniques. Once an item has been identified, the effect will remain permanent for the remainder of Bonus Dungeon scenario.