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.
I’ve been slowly playing through the early Japanese-style role-playing games, and at this point I’ve given up any semblance of playing them in release order. I keep finding out about other intriguing games that I want to try, that came out before some of those I’ve already played. For example, The Magic of Scheherazade by Culture Brain, a game I’d never heard of despite it getting an official release in English in North America. It released in September 1987, so of the games I’ve covered so far, only Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest II predate it. Reading about it, I was intrigued by its use of Arabian legends as inspiration, and by its attempt to combine top-down action in the vein of The Legend of Zelda with turn-based battles inspired by the Dragon Quest series. That sounded like such an odd mix that I had to check it out.