| Family Computer Magazine of 6 June 1986 gives 27 May 1986 as Dragon Quest's scheduled Famicom release date in Japan, at 5,500 yen, and a footnote to Nintendo's 2009 Iwata Asks interview says it was released in May 1986. | footnote 1 | Magazine |
| Nintendo says the series came out in North America as Dragon Warrior at first because of a rights problem, and kept that name until Dragon Quest VIII. | footnote 2 | Interview |
| Nintendo calls Dragon Quest the first game of its series, and says it became a byword for the role-playing game on home consoles. | footnote 1footnote 1 | Interview |
| Nintendo's 2009 interview names Koichi Nakamura as the programmer, involved through Dragon Quest IV, and as head of Chunsoft. | footnote 3 | Interview |
| Yuji Horii said he had been hooked on Wizardry and Ultima but found them hard to get into, so he built Dragon Quest with devices to make an RPG's appeal easy to grasp, and packed the essence into a cartridge too small, he was told, to hold an RPG at all. | section 1, Horiisection 1, Horiisection 1, Horiisection 1, Horii | Interview |
| Horii said that while developing the game he wrote about what RPGs are in his Famicom column in Weekly Shōnen Jump, hoping readers would become "teachers" who showed their friends. | section 1, Horiisection 1, Horiifootnote 10 | Interview |
| Satoru Iwata said that, while at HAL Laboratory, he localized Dragon Warrior for Nintendo, taking over the program from Koichi Nakamura, who was too busy with Dragon Quest III. | section 1, Iwatasection 1, Iwatasection 1, Iwata | Interview |
| Iwata said Dragon Quest brought about a huge expansion of the game audience, and that many people first understood what a role-playing game was through it. | section 1, Iwatasection 1, Iwata | Interview |
| Famicom Hisshoubon's issue of 4 March 1988 reports Dragon Quest III's release day in Japan as 10 February 1988, with stock reaching shops around 4 p.m.; Nintendo's 2009 interview page dates the Famicom game to February 1988, and Famitsu's 2014 Chunsoft chronology lists its release, published by Enix, in February 1988. | footnote 4 | Magazine |
| Jeremy Parish's 1UP interview introduces Koichi Nakamura's company Chunsoft as having done the heavy lifting on the first five Dragon Quest games, and Nakamura said he did about 10 percent of Dragon Quest III's programming. Satoru Iwata recalled that Nakamura was in the middle of developing Dragon Quest III when Iwata took over the first game's program to localize it. | section 1, Iwata | Interview |
| Nintendo's 2009 interview page calls Alefgard a region that appears in the first three Dragon Quest games and the main stage of the legend of Loto. | footnote 7 | Interview |
| Nintendo's 2009 interview page says remakes of Dragon Quest III were released for the Super Famicom and the Game Boy Color. | footnote 4 | Interview |