I have 4 Super Famicom games left, and then I will finally finish that project — I should be able to finish before the 7th anniversary of when I started.
Once I finish that, I will go back to playing strategy RPGs again, moving into 1998. I’m not going to lock myself into any particular long-term thing, but my current intention is to alternate one SRPG with one other game. The other game will be a freer selection than before, but to start off with I’m going to choose games randomly from a large list I assembled.
I believe I’ve linked to that before, but I assembled the list working off of two Japanese sites (https://retoro.g-player.com/ and http://tk-nz.game.coocan.jp/gamedatabase/index.html). I didn’t attempt to judge what is an RPG and what isn’t, but just copied any game that was classified on those sites as an RPG.
My current idea is that I will choose games randomly from that list. If the randomizer gives me a game that I can’t play (e.g. Xbox360 game) or don’t want to play (for instance, a strategy RPG or a game I’ve already played) I will instead play the oldest game I haven’t done yet. I am never going to try to do a dedicated chronogaming project of every JRPG, but I do like seeing what the early games are like.
However, I’m also going to leave it open to choosing a game I want to play, or taking a recommendation. I’m also not going to force myself to finish every game; if a game is crappy (or just a cookie cutter RPG) I’ll play it enough that I can write about it but that’s about it.
I have a post scheduled on Dec 30 for Zelda II, and then we’ll be back with the 1997 SFC games on January 13.
Thanks for reading, and happy holidays!
Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, stellar Saturnalia, fantastic Festivus, and whatever the hell else you celebrate (I’m not gonna wish you a joyous Kwanzaa — that’s a fake, made-up holiday invented by a violent, misogynist whack job, and no serious person celebrates it anyway).
Play whatever makes you happy, man. But holy halibut, that is a large list… over 2000 rows is nutso. I’d love to see more SRPGs on this blog, but maybe that’s just me. I think the whole genre is woefully underappreciated and could always use more love. There are lots of great indie ones out there, on Steam/Switch/PS4 that you could try out at some point. They wouldn’t exactly be retro, but they’re great nonetheless. My friends tell me about good indie JRPGs these days too, like Sea of Stars or Chained Echoes.
I would certainly be open to doing very recent SRPGs since I will really never reach that point following the chronological path. I don’t have a switch or a PS4 but I could get some on Steam.
Good idea to continue the project that way. Well, I mentioned it already, but I’d definitely recommend checking out Phantasy Star, since they were ‘the’ JRPGs here in Europe before Final Fantasy 7. I’d argue that here in Europe only Pokemon/Final Fantasy aren’t niche as far as JRPGs go, and even then it depends on where you’re from (AFAIK in Eastern Europe games like Gothic, Baldur’s Gate or Fallout are ‘way’ more popular than even FF, due to good localization). In your list, one can really see how much more common localization became in the PS3 era more or less. We didn’t get the vast majority of JRPGs from the 80s/90s.
Of the games on that list I am personally interested and would really love to know more about the Japan only ones considering , we barely know about them in the west.