Yuji Horii
According to Yuji Horii, he wanted to have something the player went around collecting as the previous "Dragon Quest" games had crests and orbs respectively. However, he did not want to do the same thing over again by forcing the player to collect a certain number of items before they beat the game; mini medals instead have nothing to do with clearing the game. The promotional illustrations for the Japanese version was drawn by famed manga artist Akira Toriyama, whom provided the artwork for the previous games in the series and would continue to do so for every future installment.