The NES RPG Gallery
Fourteen games that taught two continents how to adventure.
Between 1986 and 1991, the Famicom in Japan and the NES in America became the home of the role-playing game. This shelf holds the era the way this Library holds everything, cover first: Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy building the genre in public, Mother and Fire Emblem bending it, Sweet Home inventing horror inside it, and Lagrange Point closing it with a sound nobody else could make.
Read the names carefully, because the era had two of everything. Japan's Dragon Quest was America's Dragon Warrior until 2005. Japan's Mother reached the West twenty six years late as EarthBound Beginnings. Final Fantasy II and III, and Fire Emblem, Lagrange Point, and Sweet Home, never crossed at all in their era. Where a regional cover is verified, it stands here. Where it is not, the tile says so. That honesty is the exhibit.
DRAGON QUEST
Enix · Chunsoft · Famicom 1986 · NES 1989
America · 1989 · Dragon Warrior
The American box: a knight, a green dragon, and no sign of Akira Toriyama's art. Nintendo published this version.
Japan · 1986 · Cover gap
The Japanese Famicom box, Toriyama's hero under the Dragon Quest logo, is not yet verified to this Library's standard, so it is not pictured here rather than pictured wrong. The gap is named, not hidden.
DRAGON QUEST II
Enix · Chunsoft · Famicom 1987 · NES 1990
America · 1990 · Dragon Warrior II
Three heroes on the American box for the first party in the series. Japan shipped 2.4 million copies of this one.
Japan · 1987 · Cover gap
The Japanese Famicom box is not yet verified to this Library's standard. What is verified: Japan saved by password, America by battery, and the sequel outsold the original at home.
DRAGON QUEST III
Enix · Chunsoft · Famicom 1988 · NES 1992
America · 1992 · Dragon Warrior III
The American box, all dragon and orb, four years after Japan stopped for this game. 84 page handbook inside, says the corner.
Japan · 1988 · The phenomenon
February 10, 1988: over a million copies in a day, almost 300 truancy arrests, 3.8 million sold. The Japanese box is not yet verified to this Library's standard, so the numbers stand here in its place.
DRAGON QUEST IV
Enix · Chunsoft · Famicom 1990 · NES 1992Five chapters
A soldier, a princess, a merchant, two sisters, and then the hero. The chapter structure no RPG of its era had tried at this scale.
Cover gap, named
Neither the Japanese Famicom box nor the American Dragon Warrior IV box is verified to this Library's standard yet, so this section opens with its story instead of a borrowed image. Famitsu scored the game 37 of 40.
FINAL FANTASY
Square · Famicom 1987 · NES 1990
FINAL FANTASY II
Square · Famicom 1988 · Japan only
Japan · 1988
Amano's Firion and his red sword, on the only box this game had for fifteen years.
America · No edition
There is no American NES box. Final Fantasy II was never released on the NES. The West first received it in 2003, on the PlayStation, in Final Fantasy Origins.
FINAL FANTASY III
Square · Famicom 1990 · Japan only
Japan · 1990
Amano's two sworded warrior for the largest game on the Famicom: 512 KB of jobs, summons, and moogles.
America · No edition
No NES version exists. The West waited sixteen years, until the 3D remake on Nintendo DS in 2006. The Famicom original itself waited until 2021.
MOTHER
Nintendo · Ape Inc. · Famicom 1989
The West · 2015 · EarthBound Beginnings
The Western release art, styled as the NES box the game never got in its era: Ninten, as a clay style figure, under the EarthBound Beginnings name.
Japan · 1989 · Cover gap
The Japanese Famicom box, the red Mother package, is not yet verified to this Library's standard. The facts stand here instead: 400,000 copies, and a completed American version, titled Earth Bound, that was shelved.
The History
A copywriter pitches an RPG about modern America, cries on the train, and changes the genre anyway.
The Long Return
Why did EarthBound take so long to come back? Beginnings is a chapter of that answer.
The Music
What is the Mother soundtrack album? A Famicom score turned into English pop songs in 1989, sung by a fourteen year old and the choir of St Paul's Cathedral.
CRYSTALIS
SNK · Famicom and NES 1990Japan · 1990 · God Slayer
In Japan this is God Slayer: Haruka Tenku no Sonata, Sonata of the Far Away Sky. Contemporary accounts describe its Japanese art, red haired hero, armor, flaming sword, against the American box's redrawn, generic fantasy.
Cover gap, named
Neither regional box is verified to this Library's standard yet, so no image stands here. The divergence itself is documented on the history page, and the tiles will be upgraded when verified scans are sourced.
SWEET HOME
Capcom · Famicom 1989 · Japan onlyJapan only · 1989
A horror film's tie in game that critics judged better than the film. No Western edition was ever made; the gruesome imagery and the era's RPG market are the reasons critics cite.
Five tools
A camera, a lighter, a medical kit, a lockpick, a vacuum cleaner. Five filmmakers, and whoever dies stays dead. Cover not yet verified to this Library's standard.
FIRE EMBLEM
Nintendo · Intelligent Systems · Famicom 1990 · Japan onlyJapan only · 1990
Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light. No Western edition existed for thirty years; the series itself stayed home until 2003.
52 lives
Fifty two recruitable characters, and permanent death for every one of them. The Famicom box is not yet verified to this Library's standard.
WILLOW
Capcom · Famicom and NES 1989Two games, one film
Capcom made two different Willow games in 1989: an arcade platformer, and this NES action RPG. They share a name and a film, nothing else.
Cover gap, named
The regional boxes are not yet verified to this Library's standard. The documented oddity stands here instead: Europe received this game in April 1993, over three years late.
ULTIMA: QUEST OF THE AVATAR
Origin 1985 · Pony Canyon Famicom 1989 · FCI NES 1990The reverse import
An American computer classic, remade in Japan for the Famicom with redrawn art and a new score, then sold back to America on the NES. Every other game in this gallery flowed the other way.
Cover gap, named
Denis Loubet painted the 1985 original's cover. Neither that box nor the Japanese Famicom package is verified to this Library's standard yet, so no image stands here.
LAGRANGE POINT
Konami · Famicom 1991 · Japan onlyRC851 · 8,500 yen
The most expensive sound on the Famicom: Konami's VRC7 chip, six channels of FM synthesis, in exactly one game's soundtrack.
Cover gap, named
The Japanese box, which itself advertises the VRC7, is not yet verified to this Library's standard. Its back is stamped: for sale and use in Japan only. It was.