25 years: Intro

Written in 2024 by vio81

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Happy 25th Birthday, RPG-O-Mania!

So, how does one normally go about celebrating 25 years of RPGs? Reaching a quarter of a century is no small feat, so that calls for something special - a special for celebrating what we love:

25 years have seen the following consoles come (and go):

• Nintendo with the 64 (seriously), Gamecube, Wii, WiiU, Switch
• SEGA with the Dreamcast (remember that one?)
• Sony with the PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, PS5
• and last but not least, Microsoft with the XBox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X and at least as much handhelds:
• Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS, DSXL, 3DS, 3DSXLiiXLiX(L), PSP, PS Vita, Nokia N-Gage, Bandai Wonderswan (Color), Nvidia Shield, Steamdeck or ROG Ally.

plus, countless retro/Emulation/FPGA-Handhelds á la Playdate, or emulators in general.

So much for the hardware then, but what about the software? That's rather easy - 25 years call for 25 RPG-recommendations, and hopefully will have something for everyone, also including You, dear reader.

Methodology - HowTo get to #25

Quick & dirty answer: Let's pick the main FF-titles from FF1 to 16 (i.e. 19 titles, really) and throw in six more, e.g. DQ1 to 6 & ~fin~ .... but that's not what you came here for, right?

After pondering many a title, this author arrived at 49 titles (at least) - time for another approach then: Let's plot out each release year, and the number of titles on the list (clustering pre-1999): ... which reflects a personal trend, OK, but doesn't lend itself well to structure this retrospective either. Let's zoom in then, collect titles in five buckets, each spanning five years:

tl;dr: Too many!

As any RPG-playing person would do (sidenote: No, they wouldn't), let's analyze and understand the system, extract meaning and then correlate titles: [Lots of tinkering later]

Et voilá, finally narrowed it down to 25 entries, clustered into the following five batches:

BATCH 1: Playing it Safe
BATCH 2: It is _THE FUTURE_
BATCH 3: Slightly unhinged
BATCH 4: _CRAZY_
BATCH 5: Getting Old, aren't we?

which still reflects a _certain_ trend,

but now it is easier to put the spotlight on specific titles I want to recommend giving a try. And since we are celebrating the past, maybe there'll even be a ~Bonus~ thrown in for good measure as well ~~~ so, as you can see there'll be lots of good stuff to dip into over the coming weeks, so make sure to check back for a trip to the past in each new part of this retrospective.

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Back to the 25 years start page.