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Last year I had a discussion with one of my friends at school who claimed that the Super Nintendo was the greatest system of all time for a fan of the RPG genre. I disagreed, and stated that it was quite obviously the Playstation, since it had a greater number of good RPGs. So, which one of us was right? To determine that I am going to tally the good RPGs on each system, and then do a raw comparison of those results (without counting PSX remakes of the SNES games). Let the fight begin (in no particular order)!

Super Nintendo

  • Secret of Mana
  • Secret of Evermore
  • Chrono Trigger
  • Final Fantasy II
  • Final Fantasy III
  • Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals
  • Earthbound
  • Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
  • Breath of Fire
  • Breath of Fire II
  • Ys III: Wanderers from Ys
  • Illusion of Gaia

Playstation

  • Final Fantasy VII
  • Final Fantasy VIII
  • Final Fantasy IX
  • Lunar: Silver Star Story
  • Lunar II: Eternal Blue
  • Legend of Dragoon
  • Legaia
  • Star Ocean: The Second Story
  • Xenogears
  • Tales of Destiny
  • Tales of Destiny II
  • Breath of Fire IV

What's funny is that I had no idea the two systems would tie in this competition. Though, while compiling this list, I did realize why I thought the Playstation was better: it simply has a far greater number of RPGs. But, like the Super, it only has a dozen good ones. If you're looking for a tiebreaker, I'm still giving the victory to the PSX, because it has a greater number of good games that are half RPGs - action RPGs like Vagrant Story and Parasite Eve.

One final observation is that it's interesting how often words like "star," "story," "legend," and "Squaresoft" make it into the titles of good, classic RPGs.