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When thinking about JRPGs the first titles that come into everyone's mind are usually Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. They are what we’d consider archetypes of the genre but were they really “first”?
Time to go back in time a bit!
The initial introduction of the RPG concept in Japan happened a little bit differently than in the USA. While both were influenced by the TTRPGs like D&D, these weren’t well known to the wide public in Japan yet.
The idea of adapting it into a video game format was too lucrative of an idea to pass on though and the success in the US only cemented this idea further. Within a few years after the western RPGs became popular, Japan began to work on their own take on the genre.
While it’s impossible to measure when the idea of an RPG hit Japan, in around 1980 multiple companies decided to create something around the concept.
In 1982 games like Underground Exploration, Spy Daisakusen and The Dragon and Princess were released. While they were not what you’d consider JRPGs today, they’ve used some of the ideas that would influence the RPG genre in the future.
Not to mention other genres like action RPG, dungeon crawlers etc.
During this time the games were created for the personal computers like PC-8001, which, while popular, didn’t have the same mass appeal as the upcoming Famicom consoles. Famicom played a huge role in creating the JRPG genre we know today and is better known in the west as NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), simplifying both the design while making them easily accessible to people who didn’t know much about RPGs.
What’s considered a JRPG today didn’t become the genre straight away. There were a lot of different titles that had different design, mechanics and ideas behind them. The only way to discover the formula was to create the best possible games and then improve on the most enjoyed features. The process took several years but the first big step for JRPGs started with Koei, best known today for their Dynasty Warriors series.
Today Koei is known for various adaptations of the The Romance of Three Kingdom novels into both action and strategy series. Before that they’ve created a few titles that touched on some core JRPG mechanics, party system, random encounters, battle transition into tactical combat with a menu based system. Curiously enough, none of the titles offered levelling up, classes or similar core RPG mechanics yet but are still considered proto JRPGs by many.
While the term “first JRPG” can be taken with a grain of salt, The Dragon and Princess was one of the Japanese produced games that introduced the later popularised aforementioned mechanics that included battle transition, random encounters, turn-based combat using a box menu. It was quite similar to another title from the company called Underground Exploration, which was released before The Dragon and Princess.
The general idea of what is considered an RPG was still debatable in Japan due to insufficient popularity of TTRPGs or any definitive titles within the genre. Though certain titles such as Dungeon attempted to replicate the TTRPG experience, similarly to the early Ultima games, it even used traced art from the D&D artbooks. Funnily enough, the first definitive hit came from a Dutch American called Henk Rogers who created a game called The Black Onyx. The game sold around 150k copies and had a large impact on future developers of the genre.
New interesting titles and types of RPGs started to roll out the same year as The Black Onyx. One of these was Dragon Slayer which is considered one of the first action RPGs created in Japan which was released alongside another early action RPG called Hydlide.
Both games were successful and generated sequels and influenced the creation of fully fledged JRPGs in the near future.
In 1986, history was made. With the release of Dragon Quest on Famicom (NES), JRPGs became something really big. With its massive success other developers drew inspiration from both the CRPG titles and Dragon Quest itself, leading to development of the Ys series, Megami Tensei (and a later spin-off Persona) and of course Final Fantasy. Each of these titles became very successful JRPGs that shaped the genre into what it is today.
While not all of these series are as popular outside of Japan today, there are plenty of titles which are considered timeless classics thanks to their influence.
Popularity, in short. While there were many JRPGs before both Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior in the US) and Final Fantasy, they weren’t as successful as either of them. Furthermore, Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior were often the first JRPG titles that players in the west were introduced to, further giving the impression that they are the first ones.
In the minds of many western players, they were the first.Plus, it was their massive success that basically created what we consider the JRPG genre, so while not first, they are some of the most important ones.
Dragon Slayer released in 1984 by Nihon Falcom, which started as a clone of an older title “The Caverns of Freitag” developed in 1982 by Muse Software.
Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy were both responsible for the success of the genre and continue to be influential to this day. With Dragon Quest having the biggest influence in Japan and Final Fantasy outside of it.
While earliest JRPGs didn’t have much in terms of either due to still being experimental and risky investment, they quickly became immersive and interesting stories that hold well even today.
The most successful JRPGs are inseparable from the music and the range of emotions it helps to evoke. To the point that the players can easily recall what they felt by just listening to music afterwards without playing the game.
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