Open world
There is no consensus on what the earliest open world game is, due to differing definitions of how large or open a world needs to be. Ars Technica traces the concept back to the free-roaming exploration of 1976 text adventure game "Colossal Cave Adventure", which inspired the free-roaming exploration of "Adventure" (1980), but notes that it wasn't until 1984 that what "we now know as open-world gaming" took on a "definite shape" with 1984 space simulator "Elite", considered a pioneer of the open world; Gamasutra argues that its open-ended sandbox style is rooted in flight simulators, such as SubLOGIC's "Flight Simulator" (1979/1980), noting most flight sims "offer a 'free flight' mode that allows players to simply pilot the aircraft and explore the virtual world". Others trace the concept back to 1981 CRPG "", which had a free-roaming overworld map inspired by tabletop RPG "Dungeons & Dragons". The overworld maps of the first five "Ultima" games, released up to 1988, lacked a single, unified scale, with towns and other places represented as icons; this style was adopted by the first three "Dragon Quest" games, released from 1986 to 1988 in Japan.
Dragon Quest Monsters
"Dragon Warrior Monsters", the first game in the series, was released in 1998 in Japan and in North America and the PAL region the next year for the Game Boy Color. The Japanese version was called "Dragon Quest Monsters". It was released for the Game Boy Color before the console itself was released, however the cartridge was backward-compatible with the older Game Boy in black-and-white. Its sequel, "Dragon Warrior Monsters 2", also for the Game Boy Color, was released in 2001 in both Japan and North America. There are two versions of the game, similar to "Pokémon Gold" and "Silver", called "Cobi's Journey" ("Ruka's Journey" in Japan) and "Tara's Adventure" ("Iru's Adventure in Japan"), named after the main characters the player controls. Each version features slight differences, such as monster appearances. Both games were developed by TOSE and published by Enix. "Dragon Quest Monsters 1+2", a remake of these two games with updated graphics and an interface, was released in 2002 in Japan, for the PlayStation. The game is compatible with the i-Mode adapter for the PlayStation, allowing players to upload monsters to the i-Mode cellular phone version, "Dragon Quest Monsters i". The two games were remade on the Japanese Nintendo 3DS on 2012 and 2014, respectively.