The Best Nintendo Game Every Year 1983 - 2024
38. 1987 - Final Fantasy
Inspired by Zelda, Dragon Quest and the likes of PC RPG Ultima, Square throwing their feathered cap into the ring led to perhaps the biggest RPG franchise to this day: Final Fantasy.
One of the reasons for this is production quality. The graphics were lush and interesting on the overworld, in dungeons and during battle where players would see their carefully selected (and named) four Warriors of Light in all their glory taking commands. Every new area was set to unique music, the intricacy of which pushed what was expected out of the machine.
But the real drive of Final Fantasy was its story. Whilst it was dialogue-light by today’s standards, the game felt like a whole series of novels squeezed into a cartridge. Your friends who read The Lord of The Rings might’ve had lots of detail to share with you, but you could say that you encountered the pirates, vampires and dragons and experienced the shocking twist at the end of Final Fantasy.
The era of epics had arrived, at least contemporarily speaking.