Friday, May 10, 2013

Rise of the RPG on the NES

In the Mid 80s Action and Adventure games ruled the day. Platforming and jumping were all the rage. The best swordplay around was found in Hyrule. Then one day Nintendo decided to publish a game in America that was quite popular in Japan, and to market it they put a package deal out.

Buy a 1-year subscription to a little magazine called Nintendo Power, and receive a free game. That free game was Dragon Warrior. Better known as Dragon Quest in Japan, this was the most basic of RPGs. One-on-one battles, a rudimentary magic system, long grinds to advance through the map. It did have great exploration, especially the dungeons, though. It was an appetizer into graphical RPGs. Soon after, as one of the first issues of Nintendo Power players who took advantage of this deal would receive would be the Player's Guide to Final Fantasy.

Nintendo Power was ahead of the time. Today, there's gamefaqs.com as well as published guides to almost any popular game out there. In the 80s you had Nintendo Power which would write small articles to help guide you through small sections of games. For a few games, however, they would put out full guides. And if you had enjoyed Dragon Warrior, this guide truly showed what an RPG could be. A multitude of spells, a class system, a large amount of monsters to fight, a large world to explore. I spent hours pouring over the pages of that strategy guide.

Unfortunately, the game itself did not do too well in America. It was difficult to find, and the sales were so poor that the first two sequels were not translated and brought over from the Famicom to the NES. In a world without the internet, this fact would be largely ignored and unnoticed in the US.

The NES would eventually give way to the SNES, giving way to games with better graphics and music. And one day, that magazine would herald the coming of a game, promising a huge world and a great story....

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