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 On 02/11/2021 at 10:23 AM by Matt Snee See More From This User » |
There were no shortage of RPGs on the NES - Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, Wizardry, Bard's Tale, Ultima. And then there's Battle of Olympus, Zelda 2, Faxanadu, and even River City Ransom. And there's tons more. The NES is where the console RPG really came into its own, and the foundations were built for the RPGs that come out today.
I wasn't a huge RPG player on the NES, but I liked the lighter ones like Zelda 2. I didn't quite understand turnbased battling back then. Plus, the NES years for me I was between ages 8 and 1, I think. At the tale end of that, I would eventually get into Dungeons and Dragons, but it would take me a lot longer to get into video game RPGs.
You have to hand it to games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy - a lot of the gaming mechanics they introduced are still popular today, despite the so-called "Death of JRPGs" everyone was proclaiming earlier this century. The world map, towns, equipment upgrades, save points, the status effects - the list goes on.
I love video game RPGs. I love turnbased battling. NES RPGs are not as well known as other games on the system, but they were an important part of the ecosystem.
My first console RPGs were Dragon Warrior and Ultima: Exodus, which got a JRPG facelift and a new soundtrack for the NES. Two of the tracks were even made into full J-pop songs with vocals. The best NES RPG was Dragon Quest 3. I recently got the first Fire Emblem on Switch.
Faxanadu, a spinoff of Falcom's Xanadu, and Legacy of the Wizard were also great. The latter is part of one of the recent Namco Museums for the Switch.
I still have Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, the NES version. It's my goto version when I want to play it.
I wouldn't mind trading in all my systems for an NES and all the RPGs to play through.
A slime is you!
I played the first Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy over at a friend's house. We would take turns playing the game while the other would look at maps and beastiaries included in the instruction booklets, and sometimes even make our own maps. I kind of liked Final Fantasy a little more, mainly because I'm a visual person and it was nice to see both your characters and enemies on screen.
I liked both games, but not enough to buy them to play on my NES at home. I was just happy playing them at my friend's house. But that changed with the SNES. Once I rented Final Fantasy 2 (well it's 4, but you know), I was blown away and was really into 16-bit RPGs after that.
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