Game list Jan-Mar 1996, plus some changes

1995 is done! That had the most games of any year — all that’s left is 1996 and a few 1997 games (plus 1999’s Fire Emblem 5 when I get to it on the SRPG side).

Here’s the first three months of 1996 games.

  • Mado Monogatari: Hanamaru Preschool – This is in the series with Puyo Puyo but I don’t know anything about it.
  • Madara Kindergarten Saga – A rather odd hybrid time game but is doesn’t look like an RPG to me.
  • BS Dynami Tracer! and BS Treasure Conflix – These games are listed as RPGs on some sites; they involved the satellite internet addon for the Super Famicom; not sure if they even count as RPGs but they can’t be fully played in any case.
  • Bakumatsu Korinden – Followup to Kijin Korinden Oni from 1994.
  • Bahamut Lagoon – SRPG, already played
  • Front Mission Gun Hazard – This seems to be an RPG although a bit of an unorthodox one.
  • Super Mario RPG – A classic.
  • Brandish 2 Expert – In English, also I don’t know if it’s fully an RPG
  • Chaos Seed – This is another game that seems questionable as to whether it’s actually an RPG or not, but we’ll see.
  • Masou Kishin Lord of Elemental – SRPG, played
  • Ys V Expert – The 5th Ys game. Not much harder than the original despite the title.

Now, a moderate change in how things are going to go — I want to make a push to finish the Super Famicom games. I have three more SRPGs to finish up 1997. Once I do that, I will have roughly 24 Super Famicom games left. What I think I will do is change the “2 SFC games, 1 SRPG game” sequence and just play as many SFC games as I can until I feel like I need a break, then play SRPG. So it may be 3-5 or even more SFC games per SRPG game.

One I finish the SFC games, I will go back to playing more SRPG games. In addition to that, I would like to take some reader requests, perhaps play some very old games, and also pick games either at random from a large list I’m making, or even do the very shocking thing of just choosing a game I want to play.

Here’s the list I’m making. It’s compiled from two different comprehensive Japanese sites and has gotten rather out of hand. I started it quite a while back when I needed some filler posts for the Super Famicom blog, and I thought it might be fun to play some of the oldest games, so I made a list of the first 100 RPGs. Then I decided I might also want to play some games that were released around the same time as the games I was playing, so I extended it up to 1996. From that point I just kept going — I’ve added to it little by little over the past 4 years or so and as this point it’s complete through 2009 with over two thousand games. I’m going to include everything through the 7th generation of consoles, finishing with the last PS3 game release in 2016. There are probably a lot of mistakes in it but there’s no way I’m checking the entire thing.

16 thoughts on “Game list Jan-Mar 1996, plus some changes

  1. cccmar

    If you’re going to do any request, I’d say definitely give the Phantasy Star games a spin. Here in Europe they were essentially the very first console RPGs for a lot of people, 4 is still quite nostalgic to me to this day, though whether the other ones have aged that well is debatable. The thing is, Master System and Genesis have very few turn-based RPGs, surely the number is lower than 20 altogether (though there are also some Mega-CD RPGs). Overall, the number is really low, and very few of them were any successful, especially compared to Nintendo’s/Sony’s consoles.

    Reply
    1. kurisu Post author

      I’ll keep that in mind. I never had any Sega consoles growing up so I never played any of the Phantasy Star games.

      Reply
  2. Ace

    Actually, Square’s Satellaview games are some of the only Satellaview exclusives that are consistently fully-playable without extensive reconstruction lol. Treasure Conflix has a full fan-translation even (though I don’t think it would count as an RPG by the standards of your blog; it looks as much like an aerial combat simulator as an RPG). Dynami Tracer looks potentially like more of an RPG but it’s also a lot harder to find info on. It *seems* to be playable at least. Ultimately though, neither seem especially essential and are probably beyond the purview of the blog anyway. I just wanted to clarify that anyone who’s curious about those titles can get ahold of them and play them if they really want to.

    Reply
      1. Vehek

        Dynami Tracer is not an RPG, it’s an adventure game that uses the Chrono Trigger field engine. Basically, there are several planets, and each one has puzzles/quests to complete to get “treasures” – mostly items from other Square games.

        The notion of Satellaview games not being fully playable stems from the “Soundlink” games. Other games/programs were designed to be downloaded and then played anytime using the Satellaview interface, though some may rely on assets/features from the BS-X BIOS cartridge.

        Reply
  3. Morpheus Kitami

    It might be interesting to see some of the early Japanese computer games get a playthrough. Though that’s very much a minefield (of whether or not they qualify as RPGs) considering how very non-traditional those games can get. In particular, the ones I covered a while back, Dimension Fighter Epsilon3 and Star Cruiser. But those most of all are a very big question as to whether or not they qualify as RPGs.

    I’m surprised Sweet Home didn’t pop up. I don’t think it lives up to it’s reputation, but it’s certainly a RPG.

    Reply
    1. kurisu Post author

      Someone needs to play early JP computer games; I avoided it partly because I’ve never seen a good list of them.

      I looked back at the site I used (https://retoro.g-player.com), they have Sweet Home in the Adventure section. However, the other site that maybe I should have used as my primary one at least until it stops in the late 2000s has it as an RPG (http://tk-nz.game.coocan.jp/gamedatabase/index.html) That site has some other early NES games like King Kong 2 listed as action RPGs as well.

      Reply
      1. Morpheus Kitami

        There’s usually a reliable list for each computer, as in I know there are websites that list most if not all games released on those systems. They’re just not as rigorous as western ones. Usually you only get a name, year, companies and genre. If you’re lucky you’ll get a description and a screenshot.
        That said, there’s also the Neo Kobe collections on the Internet Archive, which aren’t a collection of information on them as much as basically every JP computer game released for those systems. What each game actually is…well, you’ll have to find that out elsewhere or actually play it.

        Reply
        1. kurisu Post author

          I’ve never been able to find ones that are easy to follow — for the consoles I was able to find comprehensive lists separated by game type so it was easy to see the RPGs. I’m also not sure about what different computers there were — PC98, PC99, MSX, etc or how I would know which ones to play.

          Reply
          1. Morpheus Kitami

            Well, I know of two systems with lists where it’s easy to see games separated by game type, the MSX and the PC-98.
            For the MSX there’s Generation MSX, which lists most games for the system:
            https://www.generation-msx.nl/
            For the PC-98, I found this spreadsheet which lists most games. No pictures, I’m afraid:
            http://gontajin.s151.xrea.com/
            Otherwise I’ve found a lot of the games that fall on the other systems, (PC-88, FM-7 and FM Towns) are on Giantbomb and Universal Videogames List, which you can divided into just the RPGs for said systems, but are generally mildly annoying places to look through. (there are other computers besides those 5, but at that point finding things out becomes more trouble than it’s worth)

          2. kurisu Post author

            >Whether these games are worth playing is a different matter.

            Thanks for the lists, that may help in the future if I decide to poke at the Japanese computer games.

          3. klein

            For what it’s worth, a) the refuge.tokyo site does not include any doujin games, and b) the SRPGs are found under the “Simulation” category on the site, alongside many non-RPG games.

            And I obviously meant “comprehensive”, not “comprehensible” but either word will do.

  4. stahl

    I’d love to see you blog about Chaos World for nes and Madara for nes. I’ve written a walkthrough for Madara on gamefaqs and have maps for both games there as well. Those are my two favourite nes rpgs currently.

    Reply

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