The 90s were a golden age for role-playing games (RPGs), when the genre seemed to grow and flower with abandon, producing some of the most memorable and influential titles in the medium. I was lucky enough to play many of these games as they came out, experiencing the way they’ve affected not just my taste in games but also, to some extent, me as a person. In this article, which is part nostalgia, part reflection, I’ll give my take on why these games matter and what I find so enchanting about them, and finally, I’ll consider what kind of impact they’ve had on the industry as a whole and where they’ve led it.
I was first introduced to the RPG genre through the Final Fantasy series, which, for me and many others, has been almost inextricably linked with the kind of epic, almost operatic plots usually associated with opera, yet unique in the unfolding twists and turns of innovative gameplay pioneered by that series. In particular, I was lent Final Fantasy IV (released in the US as Final Fantasy II), and that first borrowed cartridge was what got me to fall head over heels for that game in a time when an opening sequence on an airship that flew across the screen and over a fairly detailed mode-7-rendered world was enough to ensure that the game would rent space in your head for quite a while.
The world of video games was first shown to me through the lens of role-playing games, specifically Japanese RPGs, or JRPGs. Final Fantasy IV was the first of its kind that I played. It was also the first game that made me feel as if I had some stake in the story through my character choices, long before the much-hyped promises of Mass Effect and the ilk. I controlled a cast of characters who I wanted to win, for once. And in the end, I did.
The unique aspect of Final Fantasy IV is its progressive Active Time Battle (ATB) system, which offers a fresh way of participating in combat. It certainly makes fights feel more tense than in other, similar RPGs, or even in the previous Final Fantasy games. Now the player must (in effect) think, and even live, in real time, choosing when and how to attack and defend, as well as when to use magic and items, in the course of a fight that goes at its own pace. The number of hours that I spent going through this game’s dungeons and its above-ground spaces, as well as simply fighting its random and not-so-random battles, is legion. And “legion” is probably the right word—or even the understatement of the year.
Digging deeper into the series, every fresh, new episode delivered different yet memorable occasions. My unconditional love goes to Final Fantasy VI, which bore the name Final Fantasy III here in the United States upon its release. The game is set across a world where war and a crazy evil empire wreak havoc on good, innocent people. In Final Fantasy VI, you follow a huge raft of characters across a long, sordid tale of magic, oppression, downright evil in spots, and, with a good dose of character development, some kind of redemption, or at least eking out a few winning hands, by the end.
The most touching scene in Final Fantasy VI comes when Celes graces the stage in the world famous Opera House. We witness her emergence as a performer and the powerful acting chops of the character. The game features one of the most memorable and moving scores in the series Celes’s Theme, that I mapped onto Celes’s character years in advance, even for the game to render it in typical 1990s MIDI form.
The push to 3D graphics and cinema-like narrative in Final Fantasy VII was a landmark event for the series. Set in a sprawling metropolis of the future, its roster of characters and tales of corporate villainy—masked as environmental do-goodery—pressed all sorts of my personal buttons. Tragedy, both potential and realized, hinged on a stunning betrayal in this mother of all twisting tales. And yet, the story is hardly the only selling point or thrill of the game.
My journey into the realm of RPGs was anchored by the Final Fantasy series, but another game that left a deep, incredible impression on me was Chrono Trigger. Designed by some of the most brilliant luminaries our industry has ever known—Hironobu Sakaguchi, Yuji Horii, and Akira Toriyama—this 1995 release for the Super NES is a tour de force, consistently regarded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, the role-playing game has to offer.
The first thing that made Chrono Trigger stand out was its use of a time-traveling narrative. The game follows the youthful, at first only mildly successful heroes Crono and his friends as they bounce through various poorly defined eras to stop the next terrible eon from coming… and fail. The only part of that sentence even remotely overstepping any kind of gall is the “youthful” part, as Crono and his best friends, Marle and Lucca, help shake the hands of time primarily by being involved in the game’s collection of whiplash-inducing plot twists.
I hold some really great memories of Chrono Trigger close to my heart, and one that especially sticks out happened when Crono and his comrades shrank the first time they moved through time in 1000 A.D. to 600 A.D.
Oh, how I loved the first few minutes of the game with all the dramatic tension and good music accenting the most minor moments! And not only was time travel good in the first go-around, but it also offered the World to be your oyster in how to solve problems in two main ways.
The character development in Chrono Trigger was another strength of the game’s design. This was true not just for Crono but also for everyone else in his party, each of them emerged as a hero in their own right. From the simply brutal physical force of Frog to the mind-bending magic of Magus, every party member was a “whoa” moment just waiting to happen. All of them were so dramatically different, in personality and ability, that you could be forgiven for thinking that they were the game’s title characters.
Chrono Trigger’s combat mechanics were nothing short of revolutionary. They merged the traditional ATB setup with a fresh, grid-based veneer that took the concept of “attacks of opportunity” to even greater heights. Two or even three characters in your party, based on, say, the central protagonist’s “tech” system—could work together to unleash even more powerful combo attacks that scaled in coolness and effectiveness with the potential payoff of a massive hit point deduction from the enemy’s life bar.
The Chrono Trigger soundtrack, created by Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu, can only be referred to in superlatives. It’s at least as good as anything else these two men worked on, and they’ve done plenty of fine work elsewhere. The music is at the very center of the game’s soul and absolutely perfect in the context of the various eras of the time-travel title. And it achieves these amazing effects without (for the most part) resorting to what the music of other RPGs has done.
My formative gaming years were spent mostly with Japanese RPGs, titles like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger. Yet by the end of the 1990s, a certain type of Western RPG had gained serious momentum, offering an experience that was altogether distinct. Two titles from this period that come to mind are Baldur’s Gate and the original Fallout. To this day, I consider the time spent with both titles to have been some of the most impactful across my many years of gaming.
In 1998, the development team at BioWare brought to life an enthralling vision of the Forgotten Realms—a richly imagined world that has long been the setting for the wildly successful pen-and-paper fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons. In elaborate detail, Baldur’s Gate paid tribute to the firmament of the old D&D cosmos. Much of its colossal strength and appeal is due to the writing, character development, and superb voice acting. Its journey is satisfying in a very deep way; it repays the kind of close attention you want to give such an ambitious game.
Baldur’s Gate’s combat system was something special when it released in 1998 because it mixed real-time and turn-based systems in a way that allowed for both strategy and immediacy. The combat felt fluid, but you also had the ability to pause (or practically slow down time) and make the big, strategic decisions about using your party to greatest effect. I have fond memories of winning the really tough fights with great tactics and positioning, by using the right tools in the Gate’s robust combat system at just the right times.
Baldur’s Gate stood out for many reasons, but one thing that really made it different was its emphasis on exploration and the freedom it gave players to lose themselves in its world. The game took place in a setting that was as vast as it was filled with all sorts of secrets, little side narratives, and hidden trinkets that begged to be discovered. I would spend what felt like forever trudging through murky dungeon corridors, dense forests and cobblestone towns, only to stumble upon entirely new stories and fresh forms of adversity with each new turn I took. And in the event that I didn’t uncover something interesting during my current playthrough of the game, I could always try again and hope that I’d find whatever unique experience lay in wait the next time around.
Another game that defined the RPG genre for me was Fallout, which Interplay launched in 1997. It created an utterly fascinating world that existed in an alternate reality, where in the 1950s, America transitioned to relying on atomic energy. A war broke out over resources in the alternate 2070s, causing the series’ bleak, post-apocalyptic setting to emerge. But what really defines Fallout is the extent to which the player can influence the game world and feel that their decisions genuinely matter in a meaningful way. Those games are not unforgettable because they let you play as a good or a bad character but because they let you play a truly unique game.
Venturing into the Wasteland for the first time is my standout moment from the game – which is saying something, because there are a lot of standout moments. From the beginning, the game promises deep character customization and then, by and large, it delivers. After you fine-tune your avatar’s strengths, and a weakness or two, you step into a radioactive world to see how well you (the avatar) and you (the controller of the avatar) stand up in it. Then the narrative about survival in a post apocalyptic world envelops you.
The strategic challenge in each Fallout skirmish owes much to the game’s turn-based combat mechanics. The RPG format by itself all but ensures that each encounter won’t hinge on a single successful or unsuccessful attack, which would make the game way too short and/or way too frustrating. Along those lines, each of the games has experience-point-driven character progression systems at work, too, which encourage recycling of old content rather than a mad, story-driven dash toward an exit point (think of how many times you’ve had to delve into your Fallout 3/NV/4 save file just to progress a little farther). Content in these games is meant to be mulled over, except when you’re on a samey, radiant-quest-driven treadmill, and we’ll get to what that means in a second.
When I think back on the role-playing games that defined the ’90s, I see their influence everywhere. I look at some of the biggest hits in the adventure game resurgence of recent years and see how games like The Witcher and The Last of Us have brought back the art of the single-player adventure in ways that hearken back to the experiences I used to have on the couch as an SNES-playing kid. Once upon a time, there was story, there was character, and (in good games, anyway) there was a reason to care before you started button-mashing.
The design and storytelling tools used by RPGs since the 1990s have been co-opted by practically every other genre, be it a first-person shooter, an action-adventure game, even a game about stealthy assassins. The concept of a “role-playing game” is marred by an overemphasis on the second word in the acronym. RPGs are no more inherently about “seeking out ever-higher numbers” than a game of Dungeons & Dragons is about specifically slaying dragons.
These games are not just a trip down memory lane; they are a formative part of my growing up. When people look back on certain parts of their lives, they can often point to a few key circumstances that changed them. More often than not, the games I played are a huge part of those circumstances for me—which is crazy since I spent way too much of my childhood huddled in front of a television.
