I believe in make believe
Fairy tales and lucky charms and
I believe in promises
Spoken as you cross your heart
I believe in skies forever blue
Why shouldn't I believe the same in you?

or, as the song puts it

You may say I'm a fool
Feelin' this way about you
There's not much I can do
I'm gonna be this way my life through
'Cause I still believe in miracles
I swear I've seen a few
And the time will surely come
When you can see my point of view
I believe in second chances
And that's why I believe in you

this first game in the series notably does not have any NPC who sets the plot in motion, as the others do.

in fact, it has one who lampshades this and makes clear it's a deliberate omission - the player wanders around outside for lack of anything else to do, and runs across an NPC who expresses distress and says "where do I go? what do I do?"

kind of neat

this game is also interesting in that its map has, like.... it's a giant grid that you can go more-or-less anywhere on, but most of it is trees and rivers that are annoying to navigate through and there isn't anything of interest there.

the interesting stuff is mostly marked, and because you can go off-road there's often more than on way to get there.

yay! we acquired an in-game friend!

and, most importantly, his inventory space

so, this game, released in Japan in 1989, was set in a pastiche United States, yeah

it features a hospital which, when you bring in a living but healthy patient, gives you a "customized" price which works out to exactly half the money you're carrying

sigh

it's a long walk back from the dream realm to the human train station