Love retro RPGs but feel like you've played it all? Wanna share a little known RPG you loved with others? Post about obscure RPGs here so others can discover them! My submission is CHRONICLES OF RADIA WAR on Famicom.Tecmo dropped this fucking banger in '91 and it got left behind in Japan because the West was transitioning to 16-bit. A English localization was actually almost finished before it was scrapped. It abandons turn-based battle for real-time action combat with zero random encounters. You actually see enemies on the field, walk up, and beat their ass. You get a full 4-man party with on-the-fly tactical AI commands—tell your party to back off, focus fire, or heal while you tear shit up. The late-era Tecmo anime cutscenes done ala Ninja Gaiden look incredible for 8-bit hardware and the story actually has momentum. Check out this cool anime TV commercial from Japan:https://youtu.be/HQGQpf54IX0?is=oOzYoenNDT6QmM-5Is it perfect? No. The difficulty drops off a cliff in the second half, the gear customization is pretty basic, and the fan translation is a little rough around the edges. But the pacing is fast as hell and it puts many western-released NES RPGs to shame. Get the fully patched English ROM here:https://archive.org/details/radia_202504
>>12774551Thank you OP I am trying this now and really enjoying it. Too bad no one here actually plays games.
>>12774551I'll nominate バズー!魔法世界 as an obscure RPG. It has various CRPG elements that let you roleplay like choosing your starting job which presents various flavor lines throughout the game and you have to choose a school of magic to pursue as an aspiring wizard. Theres rich lore and the way the story is told you arent bouncing from town to town you essentially work from one central college, training to become a wizard, and are constantly returning doing jobs rising the ranks. Its fairly unique. Cant tell you if its in english at all I couldnt even find a scan of the manual online when I played it.
>>12774710For anyone else wondering since anon didn't even give an English title, this is Ancient Magic: Bazoo! Mahou Sekai for SNES and yes it has a full English translation patch available at:https://www.romhacking.net/translations/1575/
>>12774551I've shilled this game here and elsewhere a handful of times since I first played it way back in early 2006. One of my all time faves. That abandoned town Bandora that's in the middle of a constant fire still haunts me to this day. Another good one (not as good though) I played around the same time is Armed Dragon Fantasy Villgust (I like the NES version but I think the SNES version is more known).
>>12774710>>12774713Downloading this now, looks cool.>>12774752I will definitely give it a shot, it looks cool, thanks anon! Do you recommend the NES or SNES version? I generally prefer the NES graphics, ike I prefer the look of Metal Max 1 on NES as opposed to its remake on SNES, but the problem there is SNES adds a shitload more content. Is it similar in this case?
>>12774761Tbh I've never played the SNES version as I'm like you and prefer NES graphics and music by far (still love the SNES and everything about it, NES is just insane competition for me). I just know that whenever I see the game mentioned 9 times out of 10 it's the SNES version but I had so much damn fun playing it on NES. The battle system is this weird thing that I'm not sure has been done in other games but maybe it has. When you run into a random encounter, you fight the various enemies in separate rounds and (iirc) can pick which party member will be used in which round, then it's a sideview action battle.
>>12774761>>12774794Isn't SNES Villgust a more typical turn-based RPG? I would definitely recommend the NES version, it's the one that has the unique battle system described there.
>>12774794>>12774806Thanks fellas and yes that sounds awesome and extremely unique, I don't think I've heard of an RPG doing that... Side scrolling action battle system yes but not done in rounds and picking a specific party member to do it with. I will definitely get the NES one.
>>12774551This game is fun but the movement speed is slightly sluggish and the sprite flicker is fucking INSANE in battles when you have a full 4 person party. Definitely overclock in the emu and choose an option to remove the sprite limit so you have no flickering and play at maybe 1.5x and it's perfect. In fact the movement speed and flicker were the main complaints when it dropped in Japan (Famitsu gave it like 22 out of 40 and Tecmo completely buried it after release. It has to this day never been rereleased even on stuff like Virtual Console, never been translated and never even been referenced as a throwback. It was totally disowned. A pity.)
>>12774867*never been officially translated I meanThe fan translation patch is pretty good and as OP noted it was actually being worked on by Tecmo for an Western release, an unfinished English prototype leaked which I think they were gonna call Tower of Radia iirc)
Some good stuff in this thread!Mine would be Blue Wing Blitz for the Wonderswan Color. It's a Square strategy RPG but instead of ground units, you command a squad of tactical aircraft and pilots. Youve got to manage flight altitude, fuel, dogfighting angles, and air-to-ground bombings. It's pretty based and there is a full english translation patch available. In fact there are quite a few great RPGs on there. Definitely worth checking out the translations section on RHDN or Romhack.ing and looking through the RPGs.
>>12774710I instanlty recognized that this was the same artist as Mystic Ark's cover
Warriors of the Eternal SunMegadrive D&D RPG set in Mystara developed by Westwood with Ultima-style overworld and Beholder-style dungeon crawling.https://youtu.be/e80fng9ZDWg
>>12774867The environment for Famicom RPGs starting from 1990 was highly competitive, and from there the more time passed the more 'kid oriented' the Famicom looked to everyone.Famicom Jump II which I consider to be one of the two last great still untranslated Famicom RPGs was released a month after Radia Senki for christmas 91 and also only got 27/40 from Famitsu despite having all those big names attached to it. In late '92 Just Breed was also not that well received despite also having big names and a huge marketing campaign.Both Radia Senki and Juvei Quest had TV ads toohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQGQpf54IX0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KPma4T8_aUand yet we basically don't have sales data for those gamesFamicom Jump II fared bared than those but it's easy to understand why and even then its known sales are only 10% of what the first game sold in 1989https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-M2P5YSN7wIt's actually a wonder Metal Max performed as well as it did but it benifitted from a lot of coverage and support from Famitsu and other mags who seemed to be excited about the concept. It's a little uncanny looking at those magazines from those dates and finding out that which game gets the most support isn't necesarilly the one with the publisher with the most money.
>>12775210>full english translation patch available.where?
>>12775294holy new
>>12775285Famicom Jump 2 has a really neat battle system. I was expecting some cheapo cash grab game just using the IPs, but it's honestly one of the most unique rpgs on the system.
>>12775596Yes it's really fun though some characters are broken, especially the long range ones once they level up and get stronger later on in the game.I consider the game to be sort of the Chrono Trigger-lite of the Famicom in the way so many different talents were involved, it's very obviously DQ-like but for instance there is even some Metal Max-y elements in there with the MM composer making a couple tracks and some of the dungeons feeling like they'd belong in Metal Max.
What JRPG could be more obscure than a Japan Only non-H PC title that is punishingly difficult to fanslate because it was programmed by idiots? Such a shame, because it has one of the better SMTs in terms of storytelling.
>>12775226Holy based I'm sold on this now.
>>12775294Ah shit sorry, it looks like there isn't actually one. I played it in Japanese but I could've sworn there was a patch. Anyway, it would be possible to play it with RetroArchs translation feature, once you learn what each menu option is it wouldn't be hard to just do it by memorization.Anyway it's a cool game. There are some really cool RPGs on WonderSwan and on Neo Geo Pocket for that matter
>>12776015>RetroArchs translation feature,It might work but from experience it doesn't function well if at all with old handheld games due to the low resolution
>>12776120That's a shame. Its worth a shot though. I am sure the tech will eventually get there though. I know machine translation isn't the most desirable thing but it will get better and at least make things playable as it already has for many games. >Inb4 anti ai screeching
>>12774551I don't recall enjoying many RPGs on Genesis and this one I think flew under most people's radar. I enjoyed it.
>>12776213No shit, it was a 1996 game that was Chinese only until 10 years later.
The most obscure one I'm playing right now is Seireiki Rayblade, an SRPG by WinkySoft for the PSX.It is a remake-in-spirit of Masoukishin (one of my favorite SNES RPGs), which has an Aeon Genesis translation.I'm about ten stages in and my opinion is: excellent, excellent, excellent. Solid gameplay, beautiful art, great music, story is fantastic, romance, drama, action, boobs, giant robots, explosions, everything I want in a video game.Not 100% convinced about the upgrade system or the mechanics of the dating sim half of the game yet, but it is already one of the best RPGs I've played this year. It's also a lot easier to get into than Masoukishin because it's a standalone game.Two big, big thumbs up from me so far. I like all the heroines, but I think Ai is my favorite right now.
>>12776748Is there an english patch for the PSX one?
>>12776754I'm the wrong guy to ask, I haven't played a game translated into English in about a decade.My best guess is no.
>>12774551
>>12776867I heard this shit is brutally hard.
Great thread, thanks for the recommendations everyone, you have restored my hope that not everyone on this board is the same retarded faggot
>>12776883It's made by Microprose, so there's a pretty high level of autism involved. But it does involve a greater degree of actual role-playing than any other game from its era.
