Mauricio_Magus
Banned
There's some GREAT 8bit RPGs I have not played so I can't say it's the absolute best, but my personal picks would be:
Mother 1
Ys 1+2
Dragon Quest III
Mother 1
Ys 1+2
Dragon Quest III
This is Chrono Trigger before Chrono Trigger was Chrono Trigger. It did most of the gameplay mechanics in 8 bit. Also has mechanics no other RPG has.
Is it worth playing these days? It's pretty damned cheap on eBay.
If you're referring to DQIV I'd follow initial release year more than localization year, especially as not only are we trying to talk about a period in gaming but crossing territories anyway here; for all intents and purposes DQIV is a 1990 game, and DQV is a 1992 game. And I was just picking two of the more prominent systems (well, I kind of expect the C64 caught on more than the Master System ever did), there's an implied era there with him mentioning that RPGs were "in their infancy at least in the console space" in the OP. Early TG16 games are arguably fair game even with dual 16-bit GPUs, but games like The Legend of Xanadu very blatantly run afoul of that intent, not unless you thought RPGs were in their infancy until the PS1 or PS2. Seriously, its contempoaries weren't the original Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy as the case was for Ys I & II, but rather Dragon Quest VI, Final Fantasy VI, Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Phantasy Star IV, basically most of the very best 16-bit RPGs. By all rights they'd be grouped with them instead, it's not even made in a style more akin to what you'd see on NES.And yet, one of the most popular answers in this topic was released in 1992, just 2 years prior to the games you have contention with. Further, since you seem to define the 8-bit era as the SMS/NES era, what of, say, the C64 or Atari 8-bit?
The OP defined the perimeters of the discussion, people have abided by them. Your sound like you're upset that people are listing consoles that you personally didn't consider, when they are perfectly valid responses.
That's true, though with how long it lasted I have to assume at least with the CD attachment/version factored in it was also seen as an SFC/MD rival too. It kind of muddies the discussion in general, kind of like the Dreamcast.sörine;122664895 said:I feel like the lens also distorts for western versus eastern viewpoints in this case. In America TG16 was seen squarely as a competitor to Genesis and SNES but back in Japan the PCE was a rival to chiefly the Famicom.
This is Chrono Trigger before Chrono Trigger was Chrono Trigger. It did most of the gameplay mechanics in 8 bit. Also has mechanics no other RPG has.
Winner! Time travel, class changes, a dozen team members, and a terrible translation make this the ultimatel 8 bit RPG.
total nostalgia talking here, but my favorite 8bit RPG is Defender of Oasis (game gear)
Also should mention, Sweet Home is a game i've seen someone review recently (Happy Video Game Nerd). Looks really interesting, and the idea of a survival horror RPG seems pretty cool. I've never played it, but would like to try it.
Ultima VI
Followed by Darklands and Ultima IV
Yeah, I can go for that.
Ultima Quest of the Avatar NES is still good to this day. I'd say it's criminally underrated, to be honest.
Some of my other favorites are DQ 1, FF 1, Might & Magic, and Wizardry.
The NES version of Ultima 4 is very playable and quite sophisticated for an 8-bit game. I think FF 1 is very well balanced in terms of combat difficulty and level progression, but it's also very simplistic.
I meant to edit this into my prior post but it somehow got skipped over!
This is Chrono Trigger before Chrono Trigger was Chrono Trigger. It did most of the gameplay mechanics in 8 bit. Also has mechanics no other RPG has.
This is Chrono Trigger before Chrono Trigger was Chrono Trigger. It did most of the gameplay mechanics in 8 bit. Also has mechanics no other RPG has.
It even says on the box "The ultimate role-playing game for the NES". Case closed.
http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/9/93770/2362283-nes_swordsandserpents.jpg[IMG][/QUOTE]
Man.... Boris Vallejo is the god tier of cover art.
Did this release in North America?
are you asking because I posted japanese screenshots? it was indeed localized, I played it in english. apparently, it's on the 3DS virtual store.
like, not even the best in the 8-bit series. Legend of Xanadu and Legend of Xanadu 2 were so much better:
Oh gosh all this Crystalis love is making me tear up here, it always seemed lost to time to me. Glad its still alive in the hearts and minds. It was the first game to get emotional, shed some tears and then unleash righteous fury on the next boss. Soo good.
and
Legends of Legends here folks.
That's something else I wanted to bring up but don't think I did: didn't those updates significantly improve the system's capability? At least I know if you didn't have the newer CD card in for Rondo of Blood it wouldn't play, you'd just get this sort of mini-game thing instead. That's kind of a unique quirk of those generations in that you had those upgrades coming one way or another, either on the cart or something you added on. Still, it'd seem the carts and early CD games are on the fence, but once you got further in it was full on rivaling SNES/Genesis.Notwithstanding the fact it's really unfair to count Super CR-ROM2 games as 8-bit games (as it's regarded as a 4th generation machine competing with SFC and MGD), I really don't think Legend of Xanadu is worth a mention. All I remember are fetch quests after fetch quests interspersed with good looking but totally unchallenging side-view parts. Is the second one better?
... Man, that's ALMOST older than the FC, and older than the NES. I am inordinately fond of this vocal version of the NES theme though.
Does the boxart say "Allah" (god in Arabic)? First time I'm seeing something like that on a game boxart
This is Chrono Trigger before Chrono Trigger was Chrono Trigger. It did most of the gameplay mechanics in 8 bit. Also has mechanics no other RPG has.
Main reason why I went with FFI is it is so playable even though it is simple in nature. It's not as obtuse as some 8 bit RPGs, and it tends to have a relatively easy progression and game balance without any weird difficulty spikes.
That's something else I wanted to bring up but don't think I did: didn't those updates significantly improve the system's capability? At least I know if you didn't have the newer CD card in for Rondo of Blood it wouldn't play, you'd just get this sort of mini-game thing instead. That's kind of a unique quirk of those generations in that you had those upgrades coming one way or another, either on the cart or something you added on. Still, it'd seem the carts and early CD games are on the fence, but once you got further in it was full on rivaling SNES/Genesis.
as the PC-Engine definitely competed with the 16-bit machines of the era.
One of my favorite RPGs of all time is Emerald Dragon.
It's been released on many systems over the years, including basically all Japanese computer systems. It also got remade for PCE CD and Super Famicom later on. It came out in 1989 and was the first RPG I'd personally played that had such deep character interactions. Every character has an interesting story, and it has a party chat system, similar to skits from Tales games, but muuuuch sooner than they did anything like that. It also has (in every version except for the Super Famicom version) a seamless overworld where you can walk in from the field out of town with no transitions whatsoever. The battle system is kind of like a turn-based Ys where you use AP to determine how far you can move and the effectiveness of your attacks. I think Glodia may actually have actually been one of the first Japanese devs to start experimenting with this kind of system with their games, even though Emerald Dragon wasn't their first try at it (Zavas was).
This is the worst kind of western revisionist history. The PC Engine primarily competed against the Famicom, where the twilight years of its life were just when the Super Famicom began taking off in popularity in that region.
Further, these posts dwelling on "but I just don't feel like it's 8-bit!" are mind numbing and extremely US centric. Refer to "8-bit" in Europe and people will undoubtedly think of the 2nd generation of video games, namely the Atari 8-bit line.