The Best RPGs for the NES Video Game Console

When the RPG was born on the backroom card table of Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, no one thought it would turn into the epic, sweeping, video game centric industry that it is today. In fact, no one saw the video game effect coming at all. Born in the 1980s, video gaming was not technically advanced enough or exciting, visually, enough to carry the epic battles and hours long quests of Dungeons and Dragons fans the world over.

The Nintendo Entertainment System changed all this, when it brought its revolutionary technology to homes everywhere and made it possible to play a visual RPG by oneself, a game that would take hours to complete and offer an epic story to play through. The earliest console RPGs, while derided by many Dungeons and Dragons enthusiasts, were breakthroughs in the development of a new genre and considered some of the best games created for the early game consoles.

When people think back on the console RPG and the gaming revolution that followed on Nintendo's SNES and Sony's Playstation, these are the first games they think about, as scions of the new formula and the process that would make gaming one of the world's biggest entertainment industries.

The Legend of Zelda
The first Zelda game was such an amazing achievement for Nintendo that it needed to a second play through. Literally. When you finished this puppy, it started back up for an immediate second run. Zelda introduced so much of what we know in action RPGs today, and started one of the greatest franchises in the history of gaming. The countless hours I sat and started and restarted this game, hoping to beat it without dying...just to say I could. That's a sign of true gaming greatness, and something that Zelda has always been known for.