I finished going through the Super Famicom game videos and noting the RPGs. Here's the list, although there may be some mistakes. It was sometimes hard to tell what was an RPG from the 15-second video clips, and I may not have correctly taken down all the info.
This is a bigger project than I thought. I had watched these videos before and was thinking there were maybe 50-70 games that would fit my criteria. Instead I have 122.
I had always known that many RPGs were only released in Japan, but I didn't realize how bad the situation actually was. I came up with 218 games, only 41 of which were released in English, and that includes about 10 bad ports of computer games, and a few more games that are questionable as RPGs (e.g. Zelda III and Brain Lord). It also seemed to get worse as the system life went on -- from 1995 on, there were nearly 100 RPGs released in Japan, and only four of them were released in English (Lufia 2, Terranigma, Super Mario RPG, and Chrono Trigger, and Terranigma only came out in Europe). I wonder if that's partly why I lost interest in consoles around that time and started playing mostly computer RPGs.
Now that's not to say all of these unreleased games are good -- I'm sure there's a lot of crap in there. But we didn't exactly get the cream of the crop either.
Meanwhile I'm still working on GDLeen. In the last boss fight I did, the first attack the enemy made was a super critical that did 985 damage, three times the max HP.
(As a side note, two things always stick out at me whenever I watch these videos: Probably 1/3 of the games that came out for the SFC are Mahjong, Go, Shogi, Pachinko, or horse racing. Also, the last SFC game came out in November 2000, nearly 9 months after the Playstation 2 went on sale in Japan.)
Pachinko? Is it from Konami? XD
ReplyDeleteKonami and every other possible company.
DeleteHello,
ReplyDeleteI noticed that you have added in your list some PlayStation games.
If you want, I could in my free time compile list of PlayStation RPG-s released in Japan.
There is already a good list here: http://retoro.g-player.com/playstation/rpg/index.html
DeleteI've added a couple of PS games just to compare very early PS RPGs to what the Super Famicom was doing at the same time. I'm not sure if I will ever go on to actually do the full PSX library.
Thanks on reply.
DeleteQuick facts:
From 3.12.1994. (release of Crime Crackers) to 31.1.1997. (release of Final Fantasy VII) there are only 33 games that qualify as RPG. Using your rules, in this timeframe, there are only 15 games for cover.
After success of Final Fantasy VII, number of RPG-s for PlayStation increase.
Interesting, final RPG for PlayStation in Japan was released in 2004! - Black Matrix 00 according to Wikipedia adaptation of Black Matrix Zero Game Boy Advance game from 2002.
My idea was to play the SFC and PSX games together until I hit FF7 and then finish up the SFC library before moving on to PSX. But this is years in the future so I'll decide then.
DeleteYeah BM00 was ridiculously late -- SNES has a similar thing with the final SNES RPG in 1999 (Fire Emblem 5).
Here is another web site with list of all japanese games for consoles
Deletehttp://tk-nz.game.coocan.jp/gamedatabase/software/DB_NTC2_SFC_top.html
http://tk-nz.game.coocan.jp/gamedatabase/software/DB_SNC1_PS_top.html
I noticed differences - some games on web site that you have linked are listed as RPG-s, but are listed as different genre on above list; and vice versa.
Btw, what about Famicom games?
DeleteSome of Super Famicom games are sequels of Famicom games; like upcoming Metal Max.
No Famicom games.
DeleteEveryone has their own idea of what an RPG is so you see differences from list to list.