What's that game?


rygD

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For an extremely long time I have been trying to find the title of a particular game I saw being played when I was younger. I think it was a JRPG. The only things I really remember are that there was a character selection screen and you picked a handful of characters to start off with. They may have done the train of characters you sometimes see when navigating in some games with multiple characters, I dunno. It was either an NES or SNES game. The latest it would have come out in the US was summer of 1992.

Anyone know the one I am talking about?

Feel free to use this thread to find those games you don't remember the names of.
 
So I'm going to guess this is a top-down view kind of RPG?
I'm guessing you're familiar enough with the big JRPGs of the era, so that rules out things like the Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy Series.
Do you remember the combat style? Was it turn based? Was it side to side FF style, or facing an enemy Dragon Quest style? Was it an action rpg like secret of mana?

Wikipedia has a nice list of everything for the SNES https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_Nintendo_Entertainment_System_games
I'm not seeing a whole lot that came out 1992 or earlier, in fact I don't see any SNES games before 1991.
I'll just list everything that's role-playing or action role-playing:
1991:
Drakkhen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drakkhen
FFIV (FFII in US)

1992:
Arcana
FF Mystic Quest
Lagoon
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Soul Blazer
YS III: Wander from YS

Just in case you got your year wrong, here's 1993

1993:
The 7th Saga
Dungeon Master
Evo: The Search for Eden
Inindo: The way of the Ninja
Lufia and the Fortress of Doom
Might and Magic II: Gates to another world
Paladin's Quest
Secret of Mana
Shadowrun
Super Ninja Boy

Whew. Good luck in finding the game you're looking for.

The NES list doesn't break things out by genre, and I'm not terribly familiar with most of the NES library unfortunately.
 
@rygD : what was the setting ? medieval ? sci-fi or post apocaliptic ? describe what you remember of the characters... there were classes ? magic ? weapons of some kind ?
even the colors you remember could be useful
 
I think you start off in a castle or town and talk to whoever gives you the background, but I may be wrong. I think there was a longish passage or stairs or something that kinda restricted where you could walk right at the start of the game (out maybe the person I was watching was having fun with the train of characters). It was one of top down kinda ones (like A Link to the Past), I think. I am fairly certain it was pure fantasy, or similar (not science fiction, not historically based or anything like that). I think it had kinda that medieval fantasy look, so armor and such. I don't remember the battles, but I will try to dig those memories up. I believe there were classes, but I don't know how much that mattered, as I think there was some overlap between those shown in the initial grid you could choose from (or at least it I recall having similar abilities between different characters, so you wouldn't miss out too much if you choose a character you prefer over the supposed ideal one, if that makes any sense). I don't remember magic specifically, although I think that was part of picking a good party. I also remember thinking one character I saw was of a typical fantasy race type, like an elf or something. I don't recall if weapons could be upgraded or swapped out, although I think I remember a bowman, and melee weapon weilders like a sword and/or axe. I kinda think there was a rogue or thief or something. I don't remember colors standing out much in the actual game, so probably realistic colors (I mean for those consoles, so green for plants and stuff) with maybe some pink or teal on a couple of the characters. I think the character selection screen background was blue, but I may be wrong. The art style was kinda cutesy, at least while navigating.

I didn't watch long. There were three of us, plus the guys little brother, so we probably told him to play something that wasn't single player.

I am pretty sure it want one of the extremely popular ones that are known to even those that don't play RPGs, so I don't think it was anything like FF, DQ, etc. I will check the links and look at screen shots again, which I do whenever I try to find this game.

The things that stand out the most were the many characters to build your party from as one of the first things that happened, and, at least initially, they made the little train of characters. I don't when know if it was a good game, and at this point it doesn't matter, I have to find it and play it.
 
To my knowledge these do not exactly fit what you describe, but you never know.

Fire Emblem, Ultima, Dragon Warrior / Quest, Bards Tale.
 
There was a group based RPG but don't think it's jrpg on Sega geneses.
1992- dungeons and dragons: warriors of the eternal sun. Only train RPG I played at that time that wasn't on gameboy lol. Still a fun game if you haven't played it.
 
The Wikipedia description of the Dungeons and Dragons one kinda sounded like it (not surprising since it is D&D) but looking at pics the art style is way off. It fits the timeframe, and I suppose it could have been a Sega game (this kid's family was wealthier than the rest of the neighborhood kids, so he had all kinds of cool and expensive stuff...like a telescope... and a Super Nintendo, so I suppose he may also have had a Genesis, and maybe the rest of us didn't give it much attention since we couldn't share games and in our group we only had NESs).

@Caine, when I have looked up Dragon Warrior in the past I thought it was a possibility based on the look/time/console, although I feel the one I am looking for was more polished (so probably SNES). When I have time to watch videos later I will check out some walkthroughs to see if any of them start the way that one did. Although I don't think it was Abby of the others you listed I will check some of those out too. Hell, I suppose I could be totally wrong and it was one of the FFs. Did any of the early ones that were released in the US let you pick from a bunch of characters to make your party and let you move around near the beginning with all of them trailing behind, maybe inside a building?

Not sure why I thought it would be easier to find now when I have been looking for it on and off for over a decade with no luck.
 
do you remember anything from the combat? a lot of older games kind of look similar regarding the character art and environment, but their combat stuff (perspective, camera angle, enemy/friendlies placement and ui layout) are often pretty different, so maybe that could help :3
except for lufia, i didn't play any games with characters trailing the main char, but now i kind of want to know what this mystery game is/was (and if it's any good)...
 
No clue about the combat look. That really would make things much easier. Lufia is one of the few that showed screen shots with a character train, and that is why I resorted to watching the beginning of people playing through games. It is possible that they only did that at the beginning, since I only watched the earliest part of the game back then.
 
Thanks for the links, I will check them out.

Just to clarify, I am pretty sure it was an NES or SNES game, but memory is fallible and that was quite a while ago, so I could be mistaken, just like I am unsure about some of the details.
 
I think the only SNES RPG I'm aware of with the train of characters thing is Earthbound, but that's not tolkeinian fantasy, and it's a few years late. Still a cool game though, so I thought I'd mention it.
 
Was the game "The 7th saga"? It is an rpg with a character select screen
 
I think the only SNES RPG I'm aware of with the train of characters thing is Earthbound, but that's not tolkeinian fantasy, and it's a few years late. Still a cool game though, so I thought I'd mention it.
Nope. Fun game, though. I have played all the Mother games.

Was the game "The 7th saga"? It is an rpg with a character select screen
Totally different look/style. I never watched the videos I was planning on, so I will add that to the list of games to check out when I do that, just in case.
 
The SD3 character select screen was always memorable for me.
SeikenDensetsu3JTEng101_NCorlett-1.png


However it's an ARPG instead of a JRPG...
 
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Wouldn't that make it a JRPG? :p

I could be wrong about this mysterious game being a JRPG, although it was some form of RPG. I think...:( I could be wrong about the character selection screen. I thought it had a grid, not sure how many, maybe 12 or 15, or maybe more than fit on one screen. That last part is where my doubt comes from, so maybe it was a list you could scroll down. I still feel it was most likely a grid since I thought you could only see stats/info by selecting or highlighting a character.

Thanks for all the help, everyone.
 
You may want to try Reddit. Larger audience, someone there knew exactly what I was talking about when I was trying to remember an old 90s PC game.
 
There are groups online dedicated to these kind of questions, I had a question about a childhood game once and they figured it out.
What I usually do now is watch video compilations on youtube. If you don't find your game you might at least find other games that you also played (or didn't play but you want to try them afterwards).

For example:
NES: SNES:
 
Would you mind pointing me toward one of these groups? I try to avoid posting on Reddit, but I guess that could be a last resort.
The side effect this search has had is a growing list of games I previously had no interest in that I now want to play. At least a couple have been added from this thread.
 
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