Phantasy Star on the Master System was way ahead of its time—this thing had first-person dungeons when most RPGs were still stuck in top-down grids. You play as Alis, out for revenge after her brother gets killed by the evil King Lassic, and the story actually feels like a story, not just an excuse to grind. The pixel art still holds up, especially those anime-style character portraits that pop up during dialogue.

That first dungeon crawl messed me up as a kid—no automap, just scribbling notes on graph paper while creepy synth music plays. Combat’s simple turn-based stuff, but the sci-fi/fantasy mix (laser guns AND magic spells?) gave it a weird charm. It’s janky by modern standards, but you can see where later JRPGs stole half their ideas from.

Fun fact: the cartridge had a battery save when most games still used password systems. Felt like wizardry in 1987.