>>11940264
>rest of the world
The US isn't the rest of the world.
In my country we got an inverse scenario from yours. Everyone knew Toriyama's style since the late 80's, but we didn't get any Dragon Quest until 8. With DQ8 though everyone noticed the connection and it also coincided with a big DBZ revival during that time.
I always said they were retarded not to release the NES/SNES DQs over here. All it would have taken was put a sticker on the box that shows "By Dragon Ball (Z) artist Akira Toriyama!" and they would have sold out in a week. Of course there was no real precedent for console RPGs outside of A-RPGs and that's probably what scared them off. We were the only ones who got NES Saint Seya outside of Japan though and Sailor Moon / DBZ games on SNES were big