Past meets present: Sugoro Quest: Dice Heroes

This column is “Past meets present,” the aim of which is to look back at game franchises and games that are in the news and topical again thanks to a sequel, a remaster, a re-release, and so on. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Technōs was known outside of Japan for games and series like River City Ransom and Double Dragon, but that’s mostly because so few of their titles ended up localized and released in regions like North America. They were far more prolific than their scattered international release schedule implied, something you can find out for yourself if you bother to pick up the Double Dragon & Kunio-kun: Retro Brawler Bundle for the Switch or Playstation 4, where 11 of the 15 included Kunio-kun games received their first-ever English-language release.

While Technōs is no more, Arc System Works now owns the company’s back catalog — that’s how we ended up with newly localized versions of nearly a dozen Famicom titles from Technōs in the present, contained in one place. There are additional Technōs titles that aren’t in that bundle that have also been localized and released outside of Japan for the first time, however, and one such game is Sugoro Quest: Dice Heroes. Arc System Works didn’t publish this one themselves, but instead licensed it out to Ratailaka Games, who splits their time between new games and re-releases/enhanced editions of classic ones: if you’ve noticed a bunch of Aero the Acrobat and Cyber Citizen Shockman out there of late, Ratailaka is the reason for it, and the same goes for previous rarities like Gleylancer.

Sugoro Quest: Dice Heroes — originally known as Sugoro Quest: The Quest of Dice Heros — yes, that misspelling was part of the title and printed on the actual box for the game, even — is a board game RPG. But it’s a single-player board game RPG, so it’s also something of a tabletop RPG simulator. The battle system is a lot like other turn-based RPGs from the era, except you can see the literal dice rolls instead of just the results of them that sometimes had you hitting for more damage and sometimes for less, or sometimes missing or your opponent going first or what have you. When you play Dragon Quest, there’s that little delay before you see whether your hit landed, or how much it hit for, and that’s the “dice” figuring it out — the difference with Sugoro Quest is that you can see them rolling.

To really hammer home the tabletop thing, you get your pick of a fighter, dwarf, elf, and half-elf as heroes, each with their own specific pros and cons and abilities, and can tackle any of the game’s six quests with them. The fighter is primarily a physical attack guy, but he’s got some basic spells — including a healing spell — so he can also support himself a bit without having to rely entirely on items. He’s got plenty of hit points, but his magic points are lower, so you’re going to mostly want to use them for that healing spell.

The dwarf is 100 percent for attacking and absorbing damage: he’ll need items to heal, as he doesn’t have access to any spells, but you can also lay waste to opponents in a hurry with physical attacks… so long as the dice allow for it, anyway. The elf is the opposite, as she’s the best magic user you’ve got, and has earlier access to the game’s more useful spells, as well — such as ones that let you manipulate the dice themselves — but you have to survive long enough to use them to your advantage. Then there’s the half-elf, who is basically the mirrored version of the balance of the fighter, in that they lean more towards the magic side, but can still take some damage and fight better than the elf. She’s your rogue, basically, hence the bow.

Each character has their own gear that they can equip: magical armor isn’t going to work for the fighter, just like swords aren’t going to cut it for the elf. Shields are something each character can equip, however, but as for weapons and clothing, you’re looking at class-based purchases.

You’re going to want to switch between all four characters as you play, which can be a little tough since enemies become more difficult as you go — starting the third stage with a level 1 character is asking for trouble. However, you can take your highest-leveled character with the best gear and blow through an earlier stage, or replay the middle stages long enough to amass a ton of gold since they’re handing out more per encounter than the earliest ones, and then use that money to buy that weaker character better equipment than their level suggests they should possess at that point. A starting character with more powerful equipment is going to survive long enough to rack up levels in a hurry on a later stage, and then you’ll be all caught up.

Each area you’ll go on has (1) a problem that you’re being sent there to solve and (2) a theme of some kind. For example, one quest has you needing to find a boat to cross the sea, which splits the area’s islands apart — other areas might not include any water-based tiles at all, never mind an ocean’s worth. If you don’t find a boat, that’s fine, in the sense you can still progress, but also you’ll lose a big chunk of your hit points after every turn because you’re tired of all the swimming. Also, some of the boats you do find might sink, so you’ll want to try to find an unsinkable one. Which… this is a game powered by dice. So you might not get the opportunity!

Everything you do, besides use an item, is powered by dice. You roll to determine how far you’ll move, one to six spaces. You’ll roll dice in battle for a physical attack, or to use a spell. Your opponents will also roll dice, and here’s what truly separates Sugoro Quest from other RPGs of the time: only one of you will get the chance to attack or cast a spell on a given turn. Whichever side rolls the higher number, they’re the one that gets to attack or cast a spell. What happens if you both roll the same number? Chaos.

The above video shows a battle against a boss, featuring the fighter. A couple of things to notice right off the bat: there’s a small sprite meant to represent that you’re facing an enemy, but behind them is the larger character art for the specific enemy. The former is animated to roll the dice and react to damage and the like, while the latter is there to simply look cool as hell.

Then, notice how the actual battle plays out. The Werebear succeeds on the first roll, rolling a two against the fighter’s one, but then the fighter comes out ahead on the second roll. The third is a tie — the two sides roll again, and it’s somehow another tie. The dice just stack up on top of each other, until the third roll in this set, where the fighter gets the higher result. The attacks then stack on top of each other, allowing for a whole bunch of damage in one turn, which defeats the Werebear.

It’s not just rolling a higher number that matters, either, but how much higher. When the Werebear rolled a two compared to the fighter’s one, the damage output was given a 1x modifier, which is to say no modifier at all. If it had been a three against a one, though, there would have been a 2x modifier, or as was the case in the stack attack, when there was a four at the end for the fighter and no dice at all for the Werebear, a 4x. This isn’t exactly the same as two times or four times the damage, but it’s still far more than you’d do by just beating out their rolls by one number each time. Things can go well/south in a hurry, basically, if you start getting these larger splits.

The only way for you to benefit from these larger gaps in rolls is to grow more powerful: the strength of your dice grows as your level does, to the point that eventually you can start rolling dice larger than your standard six. And it’s not just fighting that this matters for, either: your spells follow the same rules, which means that you can’t even heal when you want to in-battle if your opponent rolls a higher number than you did. Luckily, you can use your healing magic outside of battles without needing to bring dice into it, but you’ll recover a moderate, fixed amount of hit points doing this, whereas the additional risk you take by attempting to heal in battle might result in a 4x mega-heal. Or, you know, no healing at all. It’s a literal roll of the dice, baby.

You’re going to fight a ton, and maybe won’t be lucky enough for some of the random healing occurrences in a given area, so the faster you can roll through your enemies, the better for you in the long run. Each map is about getting to the boss with as much of yourself left intact as possible, whether that’s saving up magic points for mass healing right before the fight, or fixing yourself up with items, or just avoiding as much damage as possible throughout your run. Always make sure to have an elixir or two in your inventory before any run: these can revive you after a defeat, and you’re probably going to die since you’re at the whim of the dice. With an elixir in hand, though, you can continue onward and try again without having to go back to the main castle and start the entire area over. And since enemies can sometimes just cheat you by jumping and knocking your dice over in the hopes it gives them an advantage, or they’ll crit you in a way that temporarily knocks you over, you’re going to want to do what you can to avoid restarting.

That main castle is your central base, where the armory, item shop, and save point all exist. You’ll gear up there in between missions, and pick whichever character you want to set out with from this space. It’s got quite a bit of character there despite being mostly menu-based, since there are character portraits for the shopkeepers who also have their own way of speaking. You can also check on the status of all of your characters here, not just the one that you’ve selected for a given quest.

Each map has multiple paths to take, which will become even more of a thing as you progress. You don’t always get to choose your path, but your dice rolls will do the choosing for you. Each map is made up of a number of different tiles with different properties. The standard yellow will result in a battle after you’ve finished moving. The ponds will heal both your HP and MP — you want to land on ponds whenever possible. Sword icons will temporarily boost the effectiveness of your equipped weapon until you unequip it; shields and armor spaces will do the same for your shield and armor, respectively. Castles are for story events, like meeting the king and figuring out what you even are here for. The tiles shaped like a person will let you meet with someone, which is sometimes a someone who can help move the story of that particular quest along. The small towers with a house attached are villages, where you can get information or items or also speak with some specific characters, as well, sometimes resulting in choices that’ll shape your run of the map. You can be cursed, There’s a lot going on here, and you might not experience all of it in a single playthrough, but that makes replaying maps a lot easier on you when you’re trying to power up characters that you haven’t used yet, and also just gives the game some general replayability.

In addition to selectable cheats, save states, and the multi-language localization, Sugoro Quest on the Switch and Playstation 4 also includes the option for either the original 8-bit graphics, or souped up 16-bit ones. You can swap between them at any time, too, as these screenshots show. First, the map when viewed in its original 8-bit form…

…and then the same map but with 16-bit visuals:

In battles, there’s a bit more detail in 16-bit, as you’d expect — the eyes of your characters have a color besides “black,” for instance, but none of this deviates from the original style or anything. It’s just “what if this were a 16-bit game” if you want to see it that way instead of in its Famicom form. More colors, more detail, but not a break with the original artistic vision of the project.

Sugoro Quest: Dice Heroes is a ton of fun. It might not seem like there’s that much game here, given there are just the six quests to go on, but with four characters who all play very differently and the kind of dice-based luck that will result in wildly different runs, you’re going to get quite a bit of time out of this one, especially as you learn its ins and outs. And if you’re a little unsure, it might help you to discover that, like with all of Ratailaka’s classic offerings, this one comes in at the relatively inexpensive price of $5.99.

It was released on the Switch and Playstation 4 in February of 2025, and while a certain kind of nerd [complimentary] noticed it happened and immediately ran out to grab it, Sugoro Quest wasn’t exactly a high-profile release. It’s worth giving it a shot, though, if you have any interest in a virtual board game or a tabletop-style RPG, and the little enhancements and selectable cheats put in there by the publisher ensures that you can avoid getting too frustrated by some of its more random elements, if their existence was putting you off a bit.

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