Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link (Jan 14, 1987)
Platform played: Platform/version played: "Zelda 2 Redux" romhack on BizHawk emulator (I own a legit copy on the NES Classic Mini, but after stumbling on the romhack and seeing all the reviews saying it was such an improvement that there's no need to play the original, I decided to try that version)
Date beaten: November 8, 2023
A direct sequel to the original Zelda taking place a few years later, in which a Triforce mark appears on the teen Link's hand and he is sent on a quest to prove himself worthy of the Triforce of Courage. Meanwhile, Ganon's forces are trying to resurrect their defeated king, but to do so they must sacrifice Link and sprinkle his blood over Ganon's ashes. Hence why they are trying to kill you throughout this game.
This is the first game in the franchise to feature the Triforce of Courage and associate it with Link. It also originates the iconic "Palace" theme music (better known for its appearance in Smash Bros.)
Also, the sleeping Princess Zelda in this game is apparently a separate character from the Zelda of the previous game.
Gameplay-wise, it mixes up the formula by introducing 2D side-scrolling stages similar to Metroid, and RPG elements including level-grinding for EXP, and random encounters. It's also the first Zelda game to feature towns and a magic meter.
I beat it with the help of a guide (and save states of course). The guide works perfectly well for the romhack, suggesting the experience is left intact for the most part. Notable changes were:
- Improved graphics
- Rebalances the difficulty and experience points so that they make more sense (e.g. in the original, a tougher variation of an enemy gives less experience points than its weaker variation; the hack corrects this)
- Fixes dialogue that was poorly translated, vague or misleading, including changing the names of some spells to be clearer, and changing the name of the "Life" stat to "Defense Boost" (which is more accurate to what it does; your life meter is a separate thing entirely)
Interesting to note, almost every town in this game (Kasuto being the sole exception) shares a name with an Ocarina of Time character. While OoT came out later, lore states that it actually takes place before this game, so in-universe, the towns were named after the people rather than the other way around.
Dragon Quest II (Jan 26, 1987)
Platform played: Game Boy (Dragon Warrior 1+2) / NES rom on emulator (Dragon Quest 2: Delocalized)
Date beaten: Nov 24, 2023 (on emulator)
A direct sequel to the first game, taking place in the same world with a much larger world map. The first game took place on the continent of Alefgard, whereas this game allows you to sail between different continents, Alefgard being only one of them. In that sense it's similar to Zelda 2, which incorporated Zelda 1's world map as a small portion of its much larger world. It also introduces the concept of having multiple party members to the Dragon Quest franchise, and along with that, the ability to fight more than one enemy at a time.
The plot involves an evil priest named Hargon. The original NES release in the US changed him to an evil "sorceror" and downplayed the religious elements, but Dragon Quest Builders 2, which is a direct sequel to this game, Hargon's evil religion is expanded upon, and the religious elements are kept in the translation.
Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished - Omen
Platform played: PC (YS I&II Chronicles+)
Date beaten: Dec 23, 2023
Pretty fun action-RPG. Compared to Dragon Quest I and Final Fantasy I, it has much better graphics, more fleshed-out characters and story. I assume part of that is due to the graphics power of the PC Engine it originally released on being more powerful than the NES, and some of the game's lore being fleshed out might be because I was playing a later remake; I don't know how much was added for the "Chronicles+" version. Also unlike DQ and FF, it's NOT turn-based, but due to technical limitations, you don't press a button to swing your sword. Instead, you literally bump into enemies to hurt them. They will hurt you if you bump into them head-on, so you have to try to attack them from the back or the side. It takes some getting used to. I played on Easy difficulty and beat the game in a single day, but to extend your play time, you can try to beat it on higher difficulties, and there is also a boss rush mode (called "Time Attack") you can try.
Another interesting thing about this game is that the final dungeon takes up about half the game, and by the time you get there, you will have already acquired the powerful Silver equipment needed to beat the final boss, and most likely have already reachd the maximum level, 10. When you get the Silver Sword from the Roda Tree, the Tree says something like "Now your real journey begins." It's as if the first half of the game is all just preparation for the "real" game, which is a dungeon crawl through a massive 24-floor tower. These halves are very distinctly separated, since you can't leave the tower once you enter.
I was able to beat this one without help for the most part, only consulting a guide in a few places where I got stuck.
Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei (Sep 11, 1987)
Platform played: SNES Emulator (Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei)
Date beaten: Jan 10, 2024
After playing Wizardry, it's immediately clear how Wizardry influenced the development of this game. Megami Tensei is a turn-based dungeon crawler very similar to Wizardry, but with the unique twist that rather than creating a party of D&D-style adventurers, you are given two pre-determined characters at the beginning, and then fill out the rest of your party throughout the game by recruiting the demons you encounter in random battles. Unlike some later monster-collecting games such as Pokemon, you are expected to upgrade your party frequently by recruiting new demons, rather than leveling up the same ones you got at the beginning. You also have the ability to fuse two of your demons to create more powerful ones.
I actually think the game is not all that hard if you take the time to map out every floor - then you will get all the hints you need to proceed, and you should be able to gain enough EXP and macca (money) to get through it. Unlike later SMT games which are known for requiring strategic thinking and not really being able to brute force it, for the most part in this game, you can get away with dumping a lot of points into Nakajima's strength stat and using the autobattle. The main obstacles that would make the game difficult are the steep learning curve if you've never played a SMT game or old school dungeon crawler like this before, but at least in the SNES remake, there are a lot of QoL features to make it easier to figure things out. Also, I'm sure it would be much more frustrating without the use of save states, but I think it would mostly just result in more grinding to get back up to where you were, since you lose about half your money when you die, like in Dragon Quest.
Each area in this game follows a bit of a formula where you have to find a key item first that renders the boss vulnerable. Again, this is easily doable if you're mapping out every floor. The only problem is that sometimes you will get to a boss or special room before you have the item you need, and you aren't able to back out, so you can stumble into your death if you get unlucky. This is where save states help, but it's important to use the in-game save points as well, since the "Trastart" spell will return you to your last-used save point.
Like a lot of NES titles, it can start to feel tedious and annoying towards the end. The Sea of Flames area drains your health as you walk, presumably due to the extreme heat. This is also where I ran out of Magnetite for the first time in the game, and if you continue walking with demons summoned and no Magnetite, that ALSO hurts you. The save point in this area is also a bit of a walk from the healing area. None of this was enough to cause a game over or anything, but it does get pretty challenging. I was able to keep a steady pace of defeating one boss per day at first, but got slowed down a lot in the Sea of Flames area.
The one part at the end of the game that I found to be pretty bullshit was finding the best sword in the game, which requires navigating back to Bien and finding a secret area. Getting back to Bien is actually not hard, because it's a floating sky city. Since it's mobile, you can have it summoned to the center of whatever area you're currently in, so it's not too far to backtrack. The issue is that in the secret area, there are a lot of holes that you can fall down while you're looking for the sword, which would make the backtracking very tedious if you aren't abusing save states or using a map.
Despite these challenges, I was eventually able to complete the game and enjoyed it quite a lot! In the Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei version, completing Megami Tensei I will cause you to immediately go into Megami Tensei II. However, I wasn't ready to jump ahead to that just yet.
Mega Man 1 | Rockman 1 (Dec 17, 1987)
Platform played: GameCube (Mega Man Anniversary Collection) / PC (Mega Man Legacy Collection)
Date beaten: November 5, 2023 / February 17, 2024
Took a little over an hour to beat it using the Anniversary Collection's Easy Mode setting, which removes some of the more unfair enemy placements and gives you some hints on the pause screen (although most of the hints are actually pretty useless).
Since I only beat it on the Anniversary Collection with the "Easy Mode" feature on, I decided to beat it again on the Mega Man Legacy Collection version. So technically, I have now beaten it "legitimately," although the Legacy Collection does include a save feature which allows you to save scum so you can kind of cheese it. The original game had very few checkpoints except for right before the boss. Granted, the levels are pretty short so it's not that bad to go back to the beginning, but it can get very annoying at times to have to redo things like the frustrating disappearing block sections. So I did make use of the save feature. The Legacy Collection also lets you choose between the English or Japanese version of the games, so I played the Japanese version, although I'm not sure there's really any notable differences when it comes to the first game.
Also, the Legacy Collection includes a challenge mode with different speedrun challenges to attempt, so I also completed the "Mega Man Remix Challenge 1" and Yellow Devil challenge and got gold medal on both (getting the gold medal on the Yellow Devil challenge absolutely requires use of the pause glitch, interestingly enough).
Final Fantasy (Dec 18, 1987)
Platform played: GBA emulator (Final Fantasy I+II: Dawn of Souls)
Date beaten: Jan 13, 2024
After the other old school RPGs I played, I was honestly pretty disappointed with this game. T originally tried the NES version, which is included on the NES Classic Mini, but I found its difficulty pretty tedious and boring. So I switched to playing the GBA version, but that was too easy. I don't mind that they made items and spells cheaper, but it seems to have been rebalanced to where there is very little difficulty at all. The guide I was following kept suggesting to grind, but I never found it necessary at all. The GBA version also added some bonus dungeons to pad out the gameplay. I tried one out and found it pretty boring, plus I was clearly strong enough to tackle the end game, so I decided to just skip the remaining bonus dungeons and head straight for the final boss to get it over with. Honestly, I thought I might be doing something wrong to make the game too easy, but apparently, there was an easy mode included in the Playstation remake of FF1, and for some reason, the Dawn of Souls version is based off of that easy mode. Guess I should have looked it up first. :P That's fine, though. I wasn't too excited to play this game (even skipping over it at first), but felt kind of obligated to. So being able to knock out a version of it in a single day, instead of struggling for days with the original NES version, suits me just fine. (I don't think I was aware of the Pixel Remaster yet - that is probably the ideal version to play)
The original NES version is notable for being a pretty blatant rip-off of D&D in its mechanics, in terms of the character classes, spell slots, and stuff like that. Essentially, if Wizardry is an attempt to make "D&D for the computer," Final Fantasy is "D&D as a console RPG." The GBA version changes the spell slot system to the more modern MP system, but you still have to purchase spells individually (instead of learning them as you level up) and the spells you can learn are determined by your level.
The game is fairly open, giving you access to the ship almost immediately, but townspeople are generally pretty good about giving you hints on where to go next.
Debuting in this game are the classic FF jobs: Fighter/Warrior, Black Mage, White Mage, Red Mage, Monk/Black Belt, and Thief - and their upgraded versions: Knight, Black Wizard, White Wizard, Red Wizard, Master, and Ninja. These are generally based on D&D. Black Mage is a Wizard, White Mage is the Cleric and Red Mage is the Bard. Pretty much all of the spells are D&D spells as well, but the names are changed, mostly due to the character limitations of the NES making it so they have to be very short.
Game of the year: This year was full of odd games. They are all part of a series, but for most people, not their favorite game in that series. Zelda 2 is somewhat notorious for being a side-scroller that feels very different to other Zelda games. Dragon Quest II isn't bad, but not as memorable and beloved as later games in the franchise. Final Fantasy, Megami Tensei, Mega Man, and Ys all got their start here before refining and improving their formulas, meaning these early games can feel a bit rough around the edges to modern gamers. In particular, people seem to really hate the first Megami Tensei game, although I actually enjoyed it. The first Ys game has the unique "bump" combat system in which you have to run into enemies at the right angle, making it a bit different from a typical action-RPG. I'm also not sure I would have enjoyed any of these games if I had played them on original hardware without any of the convenience features of emulators or the romhacks I used, with the possible exception of DQII (which I had played on my actual Game Boy in the past, but got stuck and never finished). In the end, I think I have to go with Ys as the most unique and enjoyable game of this year.