[A recurring feature each time I complete a year in the UK, in which I catch up with the games to have been #1 in the archived Japanese sales charts of that year, as reported in Famitsu. Thanks to Game Data Library for running the resource that makes finding these out easy. We have a few years of incomplete data ahead, but it’s still an interesting picture]
The Legend of Zelda 2:リンクの冒険 / The Legend of Zelda 2: Link’s Adventure (Nintendo, Famicom)
We surely only missed the first Legend of Zelda on a matter of timing, and here is the sequel and black sheep of the series. All of the RPG and platform elements added to the Zelda model pretty much disappeared afterwards, never to return. ‘Action game with a bit of RPG progression’ is a concept that will very much eventually find its time and place, however.
ドラゴンクエストII 悪霊の神々 / Dragon Quest II: Gods of the Evil Spirits (Enix, Famicom)
Not yet at the height of the insane Japanese sales numbers future entries would get, but the fantasy RPG series that established most of the traditions of the genre it would hold on to was already establishing itself as a phenomenon. Pretty much everything was in place, starting from the artwork from Akira Toriyama of Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball manga renown.
勇士の紋章 ディープダンジョン / Yushi no Monsho: Deep Dungeon (HummingBirdSoft, Famicom)
Our third successive RPG or RPG-adjacent game is a very different kind of old-school, with a first person dungeon-crawling viewpoint and dingy palette that makes it the most brutally ugly by a long way.
Family Boxing (Namco, Famicom)
Family sports games were all over the place! This one was an arcade conversion known as Ring King in the US and King of Boxer here.
ふぁみこん昔話 新・鬼ヶ島 / Famicom Fairytales: New Demon Island (Nintendo, Famicom)
This is one of the hardest games to figure out much about (not least because I had trouble getting it to run) but has some beautiful traditional artwork to illustrate its tales.
中山美穂のトキメキハイスクール / Miho Nakayama’s Heartbeat High School (Nintendo, Famicom)
My favourite discovery from this feature so far. It’s a dating game featuring a school student who bears a resemblance to Miho Nakayama of the title, a real-life pop idol. The first character you meet after starting playing gives a phone number which players could take outside of the game and dial in the real world to hear the recorded voice of Nakayama, giving advice on the game (it is a slightly mind-bending exercise to try to imagine a world where a UK equivalent existed and was a similar success – for a possible star my mind went first to Kylie, but scanning the list of UK #1 singles of 1987 presents the irresistible concept of Rick Astley’s Heartbeat High School). All of that isn’t even the best bit, though. This game was published by Nintendo and developed by Square, and lead figures in its development include Yoshio Sakamoto, director of Super Metroid, and Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of Final Fantasy. It has music from Nobuo Uematsu, composer for Final Fantasy and soundtrack legend. It is a one-game argument against there being some big divide between types of games and the people making them.
プロ野球ファミリースタジアム ‘87 / Pro Baseball Family Stadium ‘87 (Namco, Famicom)
Japan got in early on lucrative yearly updates for sports games; this is virtually indistinguishable from the original 1986 game.