This is Console History, a special sub-series of my more general History Lessons series, covering console role-playing games, action role-playing games, Metroidvanias, and action-adventure games in nominally chronological order starting in the late 1980s. The chronology is garbled in the beginning as the scope of the series expanded, but it gets more organized later on. As always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Right. Longtime readers will know that my Console History series has been a little chaotic so far. It started with the simple goal of playing the early Final Fantasy games, but soon expanded to include other early Japanese-style role-playing games, then action role-playing games, then Metroidvanias and action-adventures. I’d intended to be chronological with all of it, but kept finding games I’d missed and going back to fill them in. So, I’ve decided some reorganization is in order, as I describe below.

First, it’s become increasingly unwieldy having Console History posts titled like regular History Lessons posts. The History Lessons series is one of the oldest things on this blog, starting way back with my fourth ever post. That was before I’d even started including screenshots. It was always intended as a loose way to capture writing about older games, with a focus on their historical context. I never intended to be chronological with History Lessons posts, I just wanted to play some older games occasionally and write about them.


Clash At Demonhead, 1989

When I decided to tackle the early Final Fantasy games, the History Lessons series seemed like the perfect place for my posts about them. But as I started playing more and more early console games and turning it into a timeline, Console History became its own thing that feels like a distinct sub-series of History Lessons. I tried to capture this by giving Console History posts their own tag and adding direct links between them, but they still had “History Lessons” in the title, and were threatening to overwhelm my other History Lessons posts. Some readers may have been surprised, for example, to find posts about Daggerfall suddenly appear in what looked like a series focused on early console games.

So, I’ve gone back and re-titled all 42 posts so far as “Console History” instead of “History Lessons”, and added new introductory text explaining what Console History is. This intro text also clarifies the scope of the series as it stands now: playing through console role-playing games, action role-playing games, Metroidvanias, and action-adventures, in ideally chronological order starting in the late 1980s. I won’t cover every game, skipping over any that seem too crappy (looking at you, Makai Hakkenden Shada) or simply not interesting enough, and I’ll always give myself leeway to pick outlier games that don’t technically slot into those genres if I want to. But that’s going to be the general scope of Console History going forward.


Phantasy Star, 1987 Japan, 1988 US

The other big thing I needed to organize was my timeline. I think about 90% of Console History so far has been detours from the timeline, and I want to change that. This happened because, early on, I was just googling for lists of role-playing games or Metroidvanias on early consoles, and kept missing a bunch of games. Eventually I got better at constructing my timeline by going through the entire library of games for each console, which meant the later parts of my timeline were more complete. But I never went back to do this for the earliest consoles, because I kept assuming I’d caught all the appropriate games already. And I kept being proven wrong. It was time to just go back and look through all the games.

So far, I’ve gone back through every game for the NES/Famicom (all 1376 of them, plus 138 more that are exclusive to the Famicom Disk System), Master System, and PC Engine/Turbografx-16. I still have to do the Genesis and Super Nintendo, but since those released later I can sort through them in parallel while I resume playing and writing about games for Console History. And once I’ve done those, I should have my timeline back into proper shape, since I’ve been more thorough with later consoles already.


Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished, original release 1987, Turbografx-CD version (pictured) 1989 Japan, 1990 US.

What this means is that I’m about to embark on another detour, filling in a bunch of Famicom and PC Engine games I passed over originally. But once that’s done, and I’ve caught back up with Makai Hakkenden Shada in April 1989, things should be more chronological. I’m not foolish enough to promise there won’t be more detours; I’m sure I’ll keep discovering that games I dismissed as out of scope actually might be interesting enough to include, for example. But such detours should at least be the exception, rather than the rule.

To start off this hopefully-final detour, the next Console History post will reach all the way back to 1986 for an early Japan-only action-adventure game. Stay tuned!

Next on Console History: The Mysterious Murasame Castle