Some of you are probably wondering: “What is a Sugoro?” Well, it’s easy to explain. Sugoroku is a classic Japanese board game where players roll the dice to move their pawns from the start of the board to the goal. There are many takes on Sugoroku in video games, including Mario Party, Dokapon Kingdom and Itadaki Street.
Sugoro Quest: Dice Heroes is a take on Sugoroku using a role-playing game motif. Hence, Sugoro Quest is a pun of “Sugoroku” and “quest”.
Originally released in 1991 for the Famicom by Technos Japan Corp, Sugoro Quest is one of the more curious Famicom releases with its concept. It’s kind of a cult hit in Western retro game circles, and I’ve seen some videos of the Japanese version on YouTube to the point where I played a ROM of Sugoro Quest out of curiosity and while it was neat to try out, my level of Japanese wasn’t proficient enough to actually enjoy the game properly. Now, we don’t have those challenges, because the game has been finally localised into English.
This release of Sugoro Quest includes enhancements to the game such as save states, cheats, video filters, an image gallery and an optional audiovisual upgrade that can make the game look and sound like an early 16-bit release. It’s cool to witness since it can be implemented at will, but I prefer playing it in its original 8-bit presentation. The graphics are nice enough for a Famicom game with large enemy portraits (including cute monster girls!) and the music is cheery.
Sugoro Quest: Dice Heroes begins with four heroes who aim to save the world from evil, one board at a time. The aforementioned dice heroes are:
Fighter: An armored knight with a balanced set of stats. Prefers to use swords and is more of a physical attacker than a magic user, but he does know some basic spells.
Dwarf: A stout warrior with more muscles than centimeters. He’s the toughest of the heroes with the best physical stats and likes to use axes. He cannot use magic, though.
Elf: A frail girl with pointed ears, a staff and a robe. She is the most adept spellcaster of the four heroes, with a high mana pool and capability to learn the most spells. Physically, she’s the weakest of the four.
Half-Elf: A tomboyish girl with pointed ears. She’s in it for the fame and fortune and everything that goes with it. Armed with a bow, she’s more magically inclined than the Fighter, but they’re almost equal.
Each hero has their own equipment and stats to manage, but they all share the same consumable items and gold. With that said, it’s better to play with each character and grind them out because some of these maps suit one character better than the other. And that means you’ll typically run through a map a few times in order to level up a character and farm gold to buy better weapons for future quests.
Each map has their gimmicks, with side quests, branching paths, curse tiles, ocean to sail (or sink and swim) through, and even a quiz. You begin on the starting point of a map and you have to make your way to the finish. Roll a six-sided die to move your character and you land on a space. Landing on a blank space begins a random battle, where combat is decided on a dice roll.
Yes, everything in Sugoro Quest is decided by Lady Luck. Moving across the map? Roll the dice. Fighting monsters? Roll the dice. Casting spells? Roll the dice. And we all know that Lady Luck can be fickle. While this gimmick is fun, it can also be frustrating. You will get bad rolls. The CPU will cheat. Your Dicemen will fail you. And you will lose on the account of bad luck and not lack of skill.
Anyway, other squares that you can land on cause specific effects. Landing on a town or castle triggers an event for that map’s quest. Landing on a human shaped tile triggers a conversation with a NPC. Landing on a sword, armor or shield tile will strengthen your current kit. Landing on a spring tile will restore your HP and MP. Landing on a skull tile robs you of your HP. And so forth. There are items and spells that can manipulate your dice rolls to your desired effect, so there is some degree of fairness.
In battle, you can attack, cast spells, use items, flee from battle, or summon a Diceman. To attack, you and the enemy roll a die and whoever has the higher number gets initiative. Moreover, if there is considerable difference between the numbers (e.g. 4 vs 2), the effect is multiplied (e.g. 2x). Casting spells works the same way. Each character has attack dice power and magic dice power and by leveling up, you’ll have access to higher numbers on your dice for battle. Using items doesn’t require a dice roll and therefore is a free turn. Take advantage of that whenever possible. And fleeing from battle is interesting; you roll the die and the number you get is the number of spaces you walk back from your current position on the map. If the enemy rolls a number lower than your own, you’ve successfully escaped the battle.
Dicemen are a gimmick that are even more of a gamble than the game already is. When you select a map, you march out with six little orange guys. Those little guys are the Dicemen. Each Diceman has a different ability, and each Diceman corresponds to a number on the dice. The lower numbers are generally junk and will end up wasting turns in battle at your expense, while the higher numbers have better chances of you landing critical hits and using special gimmick dice in battle. I generally don’t like using Dicemen but if you’re in the mood to gamble, be my guest. Enemies have their own Diceman who rolls for them, and you can actually use bait to get them out of the picture for a turn. It’s very useful against bosses, but your Diceman can also be knocked out and it takes a burnt lizard to revive them if you happen to have one on hand. Yeah.
Sugoro Quest: Dice Heroes can be a fun game, albeit a frustrating and unfair one. With that said, I won’t blame you if you decide to rely on save states while playing. Now onward and roll for great justice!
Sounds like a more JRPG version of Talisman.