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4. Ken to Mahou (Sword and Magic, 1983). At least they tried something different. If Dungeon's fault was that it was too simple, this title's fault is that it is too complex. You have five different attack options, two dodge options, and a dozen stats whose immediate effects are not apparent.

Likely developed for the PC-80 series (due to failing to launch except in compatibility mode on my FR), this feels like a much earlier abandoned project that was perhaps revived and finished quickly for some reason.

Programmed in BASIC and with absolutely no story, you aren't missing anything by missing this game. 0 / 10

Coming up soon, Top Management!

3/3

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3. Dungeon, 1983. I wish there were more to say about Dungeon - its presentation is half a step above the previous games, but its evolution is obvious.

Character generation this time is a random, timing-based mini-game, just like Nobunaga '83 uses. You can pick from 5 classes, but I didn't notice any difference between them.

Town scenes still play out in text form, like Dragon and Princess, but the overworld is much more colorful (and even more apparent #Ultima clone).

I believe I covered the entire island map, and could only find a singular dungeon. The dungeon is, again, Ultima-like, meaning you spam the forward key to attack and glomp through thousands of enemies for XP and gold.

Despite being the most playable game up until this point, it was clear all of Shibusawa Kou's design references were essentially based in one game.

2/3

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Before introducing the other two, it should be noted that Dragon and Princess has an English translation patch!

https://github.com/nleseul/dragon_and_princess_pc88_trans

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1.5/2

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In between the failed eroge entries but before the breakthrough strategy hit Nobunaga in 83, Koei released 4 VERY primitive RPGs. The first two are:

1. Dragon and Princess, 1982.
There isn't much out there about this because it's a mostly text-based adventure that uses katakana only, making it hard to read. You name a party of 5 adventurers and wander around a world of text. Combat does contain graphics, as shown below, and while not the worst effort, it was clearly a _very_ slow mockery of Ultima (but you do have a party of heroes, so there is that!).

2. Khufu-ou no Himitsu (Secret of the King of Khufu, 1983). I couldn't find a dump of this for PC88, but based on FM-7 screenshots (below), it's not much of an evolution of Dragon and Princess. Exploration is clearly now tile-based, but at the cost of looking even more like an #Ultima clone.

1/2

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