DQ 1/2 Japanese OG: Password was the path of pain.
Credits of the photos are at the bottom.
In the Japanese original version of DQ I & II you weren't able to save, and you had to note down the password each time to resume next time. In DQ1 it was 20 letters at max, and in DQ2 it could be 52 letters long! (Having more items results in a longer password.)
In that era kids often recorded wrongly, losing the entire progress of the last play. DQ2 OG was notoriously difficult, so password failure was really heartbreaking.
For what's worse, the screen was CRT, so it looked blurry! Some Japanese letters can look confusing on CRT like ば (ba) vs ぱ (pa)—notice the upper-rightt dots vs circle. Perhaps わ (wa) vs ね (ne), or め (me) vs ぬ (nu) might be confusing.
In DQ2 inputting the password is a pain. (You use the D-pad letter by letter.) That's why its theme is Love Song Sagashite = Only Lonely Boy, the happiest track of the game, to alleviate players's suffering.
However there are positive sides too, especially for DQ2: (i) Passwords didn't remember health. All characters are resurrected with full HP & MP. This was relieving, in particular e.g. after that long dungeon. (ii) Chests and others reset too. So in the later game you often farmed >!the whackolyte in Midenhall to get a new Lightning Staff.!< This unforgiving title had unintentionally exquisite balance with these factors.
In Japan DQ 1 & 2 were released for Famicom (= Japanese NES) and MSX 1 & 2 (home hobby PCs). Yes, the first game came on 27 May 1986.
Photo 1: From 30年前の今日発売されたファミコン版「ドラゴンクエスト」を，当時生まれてもいない編集者がプレイ。竜王を倒す旅は驚きと戸惑いの連続だった at 4gamer.net.
Photo 2: From the video 【直撮り】DQⅡ つよくてニューゲーム風RTA 29分35秒 Part.1/2【ブラウン管テレビ】 at nicovideo, 2:18.