..before zelda? or just rudimentally comparable to it? i'm not the big adventure guy when it comes to RPGs etc. but i quite like the action RPG genre like zeldas etc. so since i'm recently replaying the 1st Legend of Zelda on my GBA pocket, which i probably didn't play for about the past 22 years, i was quite amazed of how advanced that game already was for its time. all those items, elements, thoughts behind, enemies, strategys, hidden quests etc. 2nd loop and so on. this game was a real unique master piece for its time and for many coming years. was this really the beginning of that kind of genre? :clap:
i'm pretty sure zelda owes a good bit to tower of druaga. there's a similar look and feel to combat and shield use, and the "secrets" like stores hidden behind bomb-able walls, how to get through the lost woods/hills, or the dungeon you enter by burning a tree all seem like dead giveaways to me that some inspiration came from druaga's crazy secrets that took whole groups of players to figure out. in terms of the free-roaming, open world design, not so sure what its precursors are.
I remember there being some old Falcom games that I think Zelda borrowed heavily from. Then again they might have been copies of Tower of Druaga as well. http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/dragonslayer/dragonslayer.htm According to this site, its rumored that Dragon Slayer was Japans FIRST action RPG, maybe even beating Tower of Druaga by a few months, possibly. Dragon Slayers sequel, Xanadu, also predates Zelda, and I think it has an overworld and all that stuff instead of endless dungeon crawling.
Faxanadu, a personal favourite, is Famicom's Xanadu and it's nothing like Zelda - more like Zelda II if you will.
Way more like Zelda 2 than anything else. The only games that i can think of that are somewhat similar as far as general gameplay goes would be the Seiken Densetsu series ( SNES Secret of Mana was the us version of the second one IIRC), and Alundra for PS1. They are definately way more RPG-oriented than Zelda, but good games nontheless.
There's a debate about whether or not Legend of Zelda or Neutopia started off that type of sword-and-sorcery maze exploring adventure game. If you believe the press at the time, Zelda and Neutopia were developed independently by programmers who didn't know about the other game and created the same sort of game mechanics completely by accident. By comparison, Golden Axe Warrior and Crusader of Centy were shameless Zelda clones, but quite fun once you get past that. I'm presently working my way through Golden Axe Warrior as part of the new retro collection out on the 360. If you're obsessive about looking for all games that deliver the same type of experience, Neutopia spawned a roman numeral sequel.
Yeah Crusader of Centy (also known as Soleil in Europe and Ragnacenty in one region, maybe Japan) is an execellent Zelda style game for Megadrive/Genesis. The premise is that you can talk to animals and even monsters bt not humans if I remember correctly. It starts a little slow but once you start getting into it and unlocking some abilities it gets really good. I seem to recall you can combine abilities too so one ability might be to throw your sword and another is to bounce it off walls so by combining them you can throw it round corners etc. Some of the bosses are great too particularly the one that acts like a chameleon and "sucks" up the texture/pattern off the floor. Cool and impressive trick for the time.
How have I never heard of Neutopia before?? After watching the video of it im gonna try to hunt it down.
Possibly silly question: Neutopia seems to have been released in 1989. Doesn't that make it definitely after Zelda? At any rate, the Japanese Wikipedia seems to give the nod to "Hydlide" (from 1984) for the first action-RPG. Looking at some Youtube clips, it looks plausible.
I just looked into Hydlide, the games themselves look sorta boring and crappy, but Virtual Hydlide, it looks like a primitive Oblivion / Morrowind. These guys seemed to be ahead of their time.
Ys was released at first in 1987. Its probably not very Zelda-ish but surely a more early Action RPG with Top-Down view and stuff.
This is on the Saturn, right? Positives include a random world generator and some excellent live-action FMV in the intro. Negatives include crappy third-person combat and very little validation on the random maps. It was mathematically possible to produce a map that had all three fairies right there in a row, making it possible to find them all the defeat the vampire in ten minutes' worth of play. If you want a worthier predecessor to the Elder Scrolls games, you should check out Dragon Lore on the 3DO and PC. First-person view and whack-em combat, combined with detailed world exploration a step beyond pre-rendered stuff like Myst.
