The official Dragon Ball website’s sixty-third entry in “The Nearly Complete Works of Akira Toriyama” — an on-going series highlighting rare and important pieces of the author’s work over the years — is the full packaging artwork for Dragon Quest Monsters 2, originally released on the Nintendo Game Boy Color (compatible with the original Game Boy as well as the Super Game Boy) in Japan 17 years ago today.

Similar to Pokemon games of the era, Dragon Quest Monsters 2 was released in two versions with different protagonists: Ruka’s Journey and Iru’s Journey. In each game, the player goes on a quest to save their kingdom while collecting and fighting with monsters from the Dragon Quest mainline series. When put side-by-side, the cover artwork seamlessly combines for a complete visual.

The artwork was recently included in the “Akira Toriyama Dragon Quest Illustrations” hardcover book released in 2016.

The original Game Boy games were released under the Dragon Warrior name in America as “Cobi’s Adventure” and “Tara’s Adventure”.

Dragon Quest Monsters 1 & 2 was released on the Sony Playstation in Japan in May 2002, remaking the original Dragon Quest Monsters as well as both versions of Dragon Quest Monsters 2. Both versions of Dragon Quest Monsters 2 were combined into a new version in February 2014 for the Nintendo 3DS in Japan. Neither of these remakes were released internationally.