Super Black Onyx (スーパーブラックオニキス), released 7/14/1988, developed and published by BPS

The Black Onyx was one of the earliest RPGs developed in Japan (although it was actually made by a foreigner living there). CRPG Addict played it a while back. The Famicom version came out four years later, and I wouldn’t even call this a remake, it’s basically an entirely new game. It’s a “blobber” first-person maze exploration game with a strange battle system and other things that just feel off.

The first thing you do is make your main character (the entire game is in English despite this never getting a foreign release). In the original game there was only one class, but this version adds two spellcasting classes (mage and monk). The way spellcasting works is pretty interesting. There are a number of different items that the mage and monk can equip. Each has two effects: one in battle, one out of battle. The number of available items is pretty small but these kind of old computer RPGs are notorious for having a ton of spells, most of which are worthless, so a small set is not that important.

The other stats are pretty self-evident except for Karma, which is like Wizardry’s alignment. You need a high karma (and I think even a monk) to win the game and get some of the better items.

Once you enter the dungeon, you start having encounters with other adventurers. The goal here is to assemble your party by talking to them. Fighting them gives you no XP. I went with 3 heroes, a mage, and a monk…or at least that was my intention. Unfortunately once you have gotten a character you can’t get rid of them except by killing them off, so I ended up with two mages instead.

The interface is difficult to figure out. I could not figure out how to do combat after reading the Japanese rulebook. I read a GameFAQs walkthrough and I still couldn’t figure it out. Finally I watched a video and figured it out. When you attack, the thing they are holding in their hand (spell or weapon) goes flying towards the enemy. If you press A again before it comes back, you successfully attack. If you have a turbo controller you can just hold down the A button and it works. There is evidently some way to switch targets but it’s not easy. On the whole the interface is horrible. It operates entirely on icons and it can be quite confusing to figure out what you are doing. Sometimes A is confirm, sometimes B is confirm.

The maps are not very easy to map or navigate either. There are something like 64 floors but none of them follow any clear pattern (because they are actually coded as 8 maps with 8 floors squashed into each one, see this example map for what I mean.)

The town area has a bunch of shops with weapon and armor upgrades as well as hair color change and other stuff like that.

As is typical for first-person maze games of this era, the vast majority of the game is simply mapping everything and gaining enough levels, gold, and items to survive the fights. There’s very little you have to do to win, and no plot development during the game.

I will admit that I did not play the game very far; the interface was really annoying and it just didn’t seem like it would be a rewarding experience.