Games of Summer 1988

IGN goes back twenty years to bring us profiles of the games we were looking forward to during the summer of 1988. Games like Westwood’s Questron II:

We were big fans of the first Questron on the Apple II and Commodore 64 — even though it kinda looked like an Ultima rip-off. This sequel looks to improve on every feature of the first game, with addition colors splashed on all of the maps. And there’s even some detail now to your hero. The towns and dungeons now look a little 3D, thanks to cribbing some techniques from Gauntlet. The new story has you being sent back in time to stop the events of the first Questron by destroying the magical book coveted by the evil wizard Mantor. You have to eliminate six sorcerers to halt the creation of the creation of the book.

Games like Questron and Ultima just prove to us that the RPG is a genuine American genre. Sure, Japanese developers have really beaten us with games like Mario and Gradius, but can you imagine a Japanese RPG that would ever top ours? Talk about fantasy.

And SEGA’s Phantasy Star:

Remember what we said about Japanese RPGs earlier? We’ll keep that in mind when we finally get a chance to check out Phantasy Star at the tail end of the summer. (Provided we can afford it. This game is almost $80 at Toys R Us.) Phantasy Star tells the tale of Alis, a girl seeking revenge for the death of her brother Nero. She must travel three different planets and recruit other heroes — including a space cat — to join her team.

Now, as skeptical as we are of the game itself, there is no way around just how gorgeous this game looks. Have you seen the screenshots? The enemies are huge. The overworld is, like, ten times more detailed and colorful than Legend of Zelda. If this catches on, could Phantasy Star be the game that turns the Master System around here in America? We thought Alex Kidd was going to be the silver bullet, but then SEGA dumped that awful Lost Stars on us.

Most of the games I was playing or looking forward to at the time are absent from the list, though to be fair I’m not sure if they were released during the summer (damn my ailing memory!). 1988 brought us many classic RPGs, including Wasteland, Pool of Radiance, The Bard’s Tale III, Ultima V, Wizardry V, BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception, and Might & Magic II. A great year by any measure.