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.
After a brief step back in time to cover Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, we are back on track with our timeline for this series. Sort of. Exile is technically a remake of a game called XZR II by Telenet Japan which released for Japanese home computer systems in August 1988, about two months after Lord of the Sword, but the remake (which is the only version localized in English) arrived three years later in 1991, for both the Sega Genesis and the PC Engine CD/Turbografx-CD. Having been impressed by the Turbografx-CD hardware when playing Ys I & II for this series, I opted for that version of Exile.