10 Best NES RPGs

As we look forward to the likes of Final Fantasy XV, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness, Fallout 4 and Dragon Quest XI, it's time to look back at where the role-playing game genre placed its first major foothold on home consoles: the Nintendo Entertainment System. The RPG genre was heavily inspired by pen-and-paper and tabletop games, such as Dungeons & Dragons. Once personal computers started being used to make games throughout the early 1980s, programmers begun figuring out ways to adapt the gameplay of their favorite tabletop games onto an electronic screen in their own personal adventures.

This led to the creation of CRPGs, or computer role-playing games. Wizardry, Ultima, Temple of Apshai and many other early classics started to become popular during the late '80s, which resulted in the genre's inevitable jump to video game consoles, starting with the Atari 2600's Dragonstomper. RPGs started to spawn on home gaming computers, such as the MSX, Sharp X68000, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64, and then they started debuting on the console that changed the scene, the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Many of the games listed here on the 10 Best NES RPGs were either advanced ports of or heavily inspired by the CRPGs of the early-to-mid 1980s. Many of these Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom role-playing games would go on to become more popular than the games that inspired them, but this was a pivotal point in time where the gaming scene started to change. Nintendo started to become the dominant hardware developer in terms of home gaming, and the RPG genre started to trickle its way onto the NES. Unfortunately, not every RPG that was made in Japan was able to cross the pond to the United States and vice-versa.

Nevertheless, Western RPG and JRPG developers were heavily inspired by one another and would go on to create an interesting dichotomy in terms of role-playing game development that has grown into the differences we see in today's Western and Eastern RPGs, such as Final Fantasy XIII compared to Mass Effect. Be ready for countless hours of grinding through monsters as we heal up in town and venture into the wilds of the 10 Best NES RPGs.