Oh man, Bard's Tale on NES—this one takes me back. It's the Japan version, so expect some quirks if you're used to the Western release. You start by rolling up a party of adventurers (good luck not spending 20 minutes tweaking stats) and then dive into this grid-based dungeon crawler where every step could mean running into skeletons, thieves, or worse.

The graphics are super basic, but there's something charming about how the game makes you map everything out on graph paper like it's 1985. Combat's turn-based, and magic users actually feel powerful later on—if you can keep them alive long enough to level up. Just don't get too attached to your first party; the dungeons don't mess around.

You can play it on emulators these days, but fair warning: the NES port has its own weird little differences from the computer original. Still holds up if you're into old-school RPG pain.