The slimes from the Dragon Quest series are some of the most iconic monsters in gaming, and they once made a bizarre cameo in an obscure title made by the same developer.
The Dragon Quest series was originally developed by a company named Enix. In 2003, Enix merged with rival company Squaresoft (the developers of the Final Fantasy series) and they became Square Enix. Squaresoft was known for other games outside of the Final Fantasy series, but Enix was primarily known for Dragon Quest. During the SNES era, a number of Enix games were localized in English-speaking markets, including ActRaiser, Illusion of Gaia, and the original Ogre Battle. One of Enix’s strangest games on the system was E.V.O.: Search for Eden, which was an action RPG that followed various lifeforms across human evolution. The player could spend experience points to evolve their current animal in different ways, making for an interesting and bizarre game.
E.V.O.: Search for Eden was a sequel to a Japan-exclusive PC game from 1990, called E.V.O.: The Theory of Evolution. Unlike its sequel, Theory of Evolution was a turn-based JRPG with overworld maps. The Theory of Evolution has a number of strange game overs/endings that can occur if the player evolves their current character in different ways, or makes certain decisions during gameplay. One of the strangest endings happens during the dinosaur era if the player keeps drinking water from a strange pool. A video of this ending in action can be seen on the Frankfurtkaiser YouTube channel.
If the dinosaur character drinks the water that makes their body melt, then it leads to a new timeline where a fantasy version of Earth is created. Your dinosaur character becomes a single-cell organism that survives on algae, insects, and moss to survive. Over time, the creature evolves into something that resembles the bubble slime monsters from Dragon Quest II, which was released a few years earlier. The slime is even seen facing off against adventurers, one of whom resembles the protagonists of the first three Dragon Quest games.
The Theory of Evolution has several gag endings that lead to different kinds of fantasy species existing, including dragons, elves, and hobbits, but the slime ending is the only one that directly references Enix’s most popular series. The slimes have become one of the most iconic monsters in gaming, and it’s clear that Enix recognized their marketability from the beginning. The E.V.O. franchise died after its second game, while Dragon Quest thrives to this day, so maybe we live in the slime reality after all.
