"Dragon Quest" has had the same core development team since its inception, as scenario writer and game designer Yuji Horii, character designer Akira Toriyama, and music composer Koichi Sugiyama have handled their respective roles on most games in the series. The original concepts, used since the first game, took elements from the Western role-playing games "Wizardry" and "Ultima". A core philosophy of the series is to make the gameplay intuitive so that players can easily start playing the games. The series features a number of religious overtones which were heavily censored in the NES versions outside of Japan.