Back some 15+ years ago, from when I was a kid ’till my late teens, I was really really addicted to all sort of RPGs.
It all started with Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior on this side of the planet).

At first, I really didn’t like the game. It was too slow paced, no action, too many english dialogues (a language I still didn’t quite understand), and the graphics were too plain, even considering it was an 8-bit Nintendo game.

Thanks to my friend Rafael though, little by little I was convinced it was an interesting game.
We started playing taking turns. One of us would literally play, and the other would act as “navigator”, using the map to plan routes, checking the manual for itens and other details.

And this is how we ended up playing, for some years, Dragon Warrior from 1 to 4!
We only had weekends to play, and it was not unusual for us to get together Saturday morning and play it ’till Sunday night.
There were several other RPGs we played, including some PC ones, but Dragon Warrior was not only the first, but probably the most present and enduring one.

There’s a number of benefits I had from playing those.
Some I can’t really measure (such as logical thinking, planning, creating, etc) and some I can (like learning english, learning how to use a map to navigate, and becoming an RPG fan).

I’m making a really long story short here so you don’t get bored, but I can safely say that Dragon Warrior is among the most vivid memories of my childhood, and I don’t mean it in a bad way.

At school, we’d make these Slime drawings (our favorite monster, and I guess most Dragon Quest fans favorite one too) mixing it with other monsters, making him stronger, etc etc. Mind you, we were the only ones around on my city (and I dare saying the few ones in Brazil) who knew of the game and were fans… I only found out how big the game was in Japan (and that it was called Dragon Quest) quite a long time later.

So, as I grew up, I decided to make a Slime tattoo to celebrate and serve as memento of those times.
Aaaand that’s it!