Tower of Radia (1991)

Radia Senki: Reimeihen is a Tecmo-developed action RPG released for the Famicom exclusively in Japan. As an amnesiac, the player wanders around the game world with a party in tow as they fight monsters in real time and learn political secrets in the story. Radia Senki: Reimeihan (literally "Chronicles of the Radia War: Dawn") is an action RPG developed by Tecmo for the Famicom. Only garnering an official release in Japan, Radia Senki puts players in the shoes of an amnesiac protagonist who can be named. While in search of his own memories, the protagonist soon encounters other characters such as Darth, a man out for revenge, and a mysterious princess and together they roam the game world in search of answers to various questions that plague their lives. As per the times in Tecmo's development antics, the game features cinematic cutscenes and musical stylings similar to that of their critically-acclaimed Ninja Gaiden. Radia Senki features gameplay mechanics that are unconventional for its period, only being commonly adopted in strategy RPGs and other game types in later hardware generations. While there are fundamental RPG components in place such as equipment, shops, town exploration, and experience points, the actual combat takes place in real-time. The player only controls the protagonist directly, but can issue different strategic commands to other party members that, in turn, influence their AI as they fight. Furthermore, while fights do consist of random encounters, they take place on the same playing field as the game world itself, meaning that there are no transitions into battle-specific arenas like turn-based RPGs at the time such as Final Fantasy. Experience points are also gained in real-time as each character defeats enemies. When battles have concluded, the player receives complimentary items before being whisked back to the point on the map where they were walking prior to the fighting.

• Release Date: December 15, 1991