The Japanese Line
How Wizardry and Ultima became Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and Elden Ring
Begin at stop 1: Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
In the early 1980s, a few Japanese programmers encountered American computer RPGs such as Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord and Ultima and began to wonder how the form might work in Japan. What they built changed the genre worldwide.
The first stops are the pioneers. Henk Rogers's The Black Onyx taught the RPG to Japanese computer owners, while Hydlide and Dragon Slayer made it faster and more physical, laying foundations for the Japanese Action RPGs & Hack-and-Slash.
Then comes the decisive move to consoles. Yuji Horii's Dragon Quest (1986) stripped the Western RPG down for the Famicom and dressed it in Akira Toriyama's manga art. It became a national phenomenon, and a year later Square / Square Enix's Final Fantasy and Sega's Phantasy Star followed. Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light added a Tactical & Strategy RPGs branch.
The middle of the tour is the 16-bit golden age, represented here by Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger, when the Japanese RPGs (JRPG) became known for ambitious stories, large casts and memorable music. Pokémon Red and Green and Final Fantasy VII then carried the form to its largest audiences, one on a handheld and one on the PlayStation.
The last stop, Elden Ring, belongs to a different branch. FromSoftware grew out of its own first-person dungeon crawls of the 1990s rather than the Dragon Quest tradition, and Hidetaka Miyazaki's Demon's Souls and Dark Souls turned difficulty into a design philosophy. Their descendants, the Soulslikes games, are among the most influential action RPGs of the century so far.
Notice also how Japanese designers adapted the form to their audience. Dragon Quest was promoted through Weekly Shonen Jump, Final Fantasy through its music and art, and Pokémon through trading between friends on a link cable.
Along the way, watch for the traffic in both directions. Japanese designers borrowed from Wizardry and D&D, and Western designers in turn learned from Japan's music, character art and storytelling.
- 1Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad OverlordDungeon crawler · 1981
The line starts in America. Sir-Tech's 1981 Apple II dungeon crawl found devoted players in Japan, among them Yuji Horii, and its first-person party battles became a model for Japanese designers.
- 2The Black OnyxJapanese RPG · 1984
In 1984 Henk Rogers, a Dutch-born programmer living in Japan, built an RPG for Japanese computers from scratch. To explain an unfamiliar genre, it showed hit points as colored bars. It taught many Japanese players what an RPG was.
- 3HydlideAction RPG · 1984
Also 1984: T&E Soft's action RPG, in which the knight Jim regenerates health by standing still. Japan was already developing its own real-time variation on the form.
- 4Dragon SlayerAction RPG · 1984
Nihon Falcom's 1984 maze game, with real-time sword fights and a house you could push around the dungeon, helped define the Japanese action RPG. Its sequel Xanadu became Japan's best-selling PC game.
- 5Dragon QuestJapanese RPG · 1986
The keystone. In 1986 Yuji Horii combined Wizardry's battles with Ultima's overhead map, added Akira Toriyama's art and Koichi Sugiyama's music, and simplified everything for the Famicom. The RPG became a national pastime in Japan.
- 6SlimeOoze · 1936
A side gallery. Toriyama drew Dragon Quest's weakest monster as a smiling blue droplet, and the slime became the series' mascot. Compare it with the ooze of Western dungeons to see how Japan rethought an old monster.
- 7Final FantasyJapanese RPG · 1987
Square's 1987 gamble: four Warriors of Light, four crystals and battles built on D&D and Wizardry. Hironobu Sakaguchi's team drew openly on Western games while developing a style of their own.
- 8Phantasy StarJapanese RPG · 1987
Sega's answer arrived two days later, with a heroine, three planets and 3D dungeons. Rieko Kodama was its main artist. It reached the West in 1988, before either Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy.
- 9Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of LightTactical RPG · 1990
Nintendo's 1990 grid-map war, in which fallen soldiers stay dead, established the tactical RPG in Japan. It had no official English release until 2020.
- 10Final Fantasy VIJapanese RPG · 1994
In 1994, the 16-bit peak: fourteen permanent playable characters, an opera, and a world that ends halfway through. The Japanese RPG had become a vehicle for large-scale storytelling.
- 11Chrono TriggerJapanese RPG · 1995
In 1995 Square assembled a 'Dream Team' that included Dragon Quest's Horii and Toriyama alongside Sakaguchi. The rival lines of this tour met in one time-travel epic with multiple endings.
- 12Pokémon Red and GreenJapanese RPG · 1996
Game Freak's 1996 Game Boy RPG about catching and trading 151 monsters turned the genre's collecting instinct into the foundation of a global franchise.
- 13Final Fantasy VIIJapanese RPG · 1997
In 1997 Square moved to Sony's PlayStation for the storage of CD-ROMs, and Final Fantasy VII brought the Japanese RPG to a mass Western audience.
- 14Elden RingAction RPG · 2022
End with a new line. FromSoftware's 2022 open world, directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki with mythology contributed by George R. R. Martin, grew from the demanding Souls games and won Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2022.