Did you have a Sega CD while growing up? Did you have any of these games?

Cursed enough to have a Sega-CD? My dude, my best gamer moment is renting a Sega CD from Blockbuster along with Lunar, and managing to beat Lunar within the 3 days rental period. It was epic. My butt was sore, and Luna's 'La La La' will be forever etched in my memory.

We got a Sega CD for Christmas of 96. My brother's best friend was a rich kid. So he gave us his old Sega CD console since in 96 he had a PS1, N64 and I think a Saturn. This guy had tons of stuff. He even had a subscription to Sega Channel. Dude was streaming games onto his Genesis before that was even considered a thing most people were familiar with. We didn't get a whole lot of games because he didn't have that many. But he did have Lunar Silver Star and Eternal Blue. That was all I needed because those two RPGs are some of the best of the 90s.

Fun fact, Wolf Team (the one developing the Arcus games) would later lay the foundation of the two most well-loved and niche Action JRPG series. I'm of course referring to the Tales and Star Ocean series respectively.

Lunar 2 is my top favorite Sega CD RPG game of all time and one of my favorite games of all time.

Arcus I+II+III is amazing if you can get into it, and it has cool boss music. It's like Phantasy Star III where the story starts over twice.

the sega CD shadowrun game has needed an english patch for decades, its been started and stoped so many times ive given up hope of it ever happening...

Shining Force 1 and 2 are great and part of my childhood. You convinced me, I'm gonna play Shining Force CD

I was in my 30s when I realized that a Lodoss Wars RPG for the Sega CD in the style of Shining Force. And surprise, it sucks.

i never had a sega cd. thank you for the insight into the gems on the system. i love your videos, temperament, and presentation. also thanks for not giving up when you lost that drive, it had to be hard!

Thanks for keeping this all going, as always. Always a highlight of the week when you upload.

What about Dungeon Master II? It plays very similar to Eye of the Beholder. It’s one of my childhood favorites.

Thank you. I had not a Sega CD while growing, but had a Mega Drive/Genesis. I love Phantasy Star, and now I bought a Sega CD to play those RPG forgotten in time. Because I dont like playing on emulators, and I want to feel how the original game was when released. Lunar SS and EB are my next games to finish

Eternal Blue was extremely hard and frustrating on the Sega CD with the random encounters, I had to switch to the PlayStation version to beat it. Also I dont get the hate for Working Designs, its because of them we got Lunar to begin with and the translation was miles ahead of what competitors (like square) were doing at the time. Id also thank them for that badass intro song to Silver Star which they completely reworked that really helped sell that game from the moment you turned it on.

Richard loses all of his shit and comes back with an absolute BARNBURNER of a video

Still watching the video but I just got to the Eye of the Beholder part of the video and a lil hint about the movement, if you hit (or maybe hold, I can't remember) START on your controller, it lets you use the D-pad to move instead of having to manually click the arrow buttons, making navigation infinitely easier and actually a joy to play on the console.

I rented the PlayStation version of Lunar: The Silver Star from Blockbuster for a weekend back in the 90's, but I never finished it. I played both Snatcher & Shining Force CD at my cousin's house in the Summer of '91 & both games were amazing.

Great list! As much as I love The Terminator and Blade Runner, I have no idea why I have never played Snatcher. I'm a big Kojima fan too. I have no excuse. I understand the hate of Working Designs, but they also gave us Elemental Gearbolt, a game that combined a sci-fi fantasy setting, RPG elements, amazing animated sequences with voice acting, and set it all on a rail shooter. The soundtrack was revolutionary for the time as well. I don't know how good your marksmanship is, but it pretty much screams "Play me, Richard!" It's so sad that some of these games will never have an English patch. I still think the worst is that the original SMT: Devil Summoner, despite being on multiple systems, has no English patch after all these decades. Which do you think is the game most deserving of an English patch at this point? Sorry about your hard drive, dude, but you've landed on your feet like a cat. Well done. 🐈

Wow, so many highlights from my childhood. I owned all 6 of these games. Had to use a guide to beat D&D it was so clunky and unfun. Only played it once. Vay I beat a few times, and I love the title screen cinematic. I just about memorized it and it still pops in my head today. But it was so hard, you had to play it about perfectly to survive. (And grind a lot). Dark Wizard I beat a couple times. It's a really long game, 100 hours per playthrough. Shining Force CD was just two prior Shining Force games combined with one new scenario. I played through it once and felt like I'd wasted my money since I already had the other Shining Force games. I LOVED the Lunar games. Here's how I would rank them. 1. Lunar: Silver Star Story 2. Lunar: Eternal Blue 3. Dark Wizard 4. Vay 5. Shining Force CD 6. D&D Great video!

Bought my Sega cd from a classmate In either 93 or 94 I was a freshman/sophomore in HS. Me and my brother rented dark wizard and lunar. Our minds were blown at how awesome they were. Great memories

Eye of the Beholder wasn't technically part of the Gold Box series. While it was a licensed D&D game published by SSI during the early '90s, it didn't come in a gold box and didn't use the Gold Box engine that the other games did. Instead it uses the AESOP engine. The similar package design has led to some people referring to it as the origin of a Black Box series

So much retro goodness here! Nice vid mate. Shining force is timeless

Would have been nice to get a phantasy star iv on scd but, oh well. Played a few hours of shining force CD and it was a definite step up presentation wise from Shining Force 1 and 2. Nice to see that Camelot got to make the game they wanted to make without the limitations of 2 MB of ROM

thanks great video looking forward to watching more stuff here for sure

Vay was a favorite as a kid. Despite what working designs did to make it less enjoyable, it still captured my heart.

Great video! I would love to try one or two from that list! Hey RPG fort, what is the most similar game to shinning force 2 you know? Tactical RPG with overworld, I'm dying to play something like that again!

Lunar 2 is my absolute favorite game ever made. There's nothing that quite struck me the way it did. IYKYK. Ronfar is still my favorite take on that kind of character. The broken holy man who cares, but only just enough, because his heart has just been through so much. I love the fact that he's a gambler and too horny for his own good, but he's also the guy keeping us alive through some absolute brutally difficult bosses. He truly is a great guy. Making a deal with Lucia, gambling his soul for a chance to save her mind. That's still my favorite scene in all of gaming. That's how hard it hit me when I first played it.

I never owned a Sega CD till like, super late when you could find the things for like 50 bucks. My friend did though. He was the sega console guy and I had the Nintendos. So he played FF games at my house and I got to play both lunar games. You gushed over Eternal Blue and I still don't think it does it justice. I am extremely biased though, because the slow playthrough I had to do only when I could visit his house long enough to get some time in, created some of the most lasting memories of my life. I can look at individual pictures and scenes from that game and instantly go back to my childhood. Its powerful, but I mean, its also an amazing experience on its own. The attention to detail on the characters personalities and dialogue (WD translation or not) was absolutely multiple generations ahead of its time. Around a time when even having characters with some character specific dialogue was rare. These guys would have more lines talking to people in a single town than almost any other RPG, FF games included, might have in a whole game. And all their convos just felt natural. Party member banter is like a staple requirement for a good story for me because of this game.

So did you just forget about Heimdall, Dungeon Master II: Skullkeep & Dungeon Explorer?? Nice video overall tho.

Good video. That's really interesting. If someone asked me if the Sega CD had good rpgs I would have said sure, I would have named the 6 games you reviewed and I would have said and surely there's a bunch more I don't know about. Funny to realize, nope, that's the whole list. I will add in I feel that Eternal Blue is not only the best rpg on the Sega CD but to me it's the best rpg of the 16 bit generation. I know others would prefer Crono Trigger or FFVI and I like those games too but my order is Eternal Blue, Phantasy Star IV, Earthbound and then Crono Trigger and FFVI.

Im 40 years old and I consider Dark Wizard my absolutely favorite game EVER. It teached me a whole different perspective in terms of videogame (until Ive played it, videogames for me was one sitting wonders like Sonic, Streets of Rage. and Road Rash). The first game Ive got addicted in my life was Dark Wizard. I really LOVE this game.

I absolutely love Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete and Eternal Blue for the PSX. I wish I had been able to play the OG games on Sega CD though.

stupendously minor correction: Eye of the Beholder was not a goldbox game; it neither ran on the goldbox engine nor was it ever released in a gold box, the box itself being black bordered that said, great game. SSI made good stuff for the D&D license

Woah a big list of games I've never played nor will ever have time to play! If that Shadowrun game ever gets translated that's a drop everything and immediate play though

It's no Snatcher, but with Shadowrun (JP) and Snatcher mentioned, I was surprised not to see Rise of the Dragon also mentioned.

Arcus 1,2 and 3 wolud have sold very well in the west. Shame they is so many RPGs that we missed out on

What is your problem with working designs? You are the first person I've ever heard malign them. I loved the translation of lunar and lunar 2 on the psx.

This was a great video! I only got my Mega CD (yes I'm in PAL territory 😛) a couple of years ago and a lot of the games you mentioned are ones I want to play. The problem is that the Lunar series, Vay and Popful Mail were never released in PAL! So I've spent the last two years figuring out how to alter Eternal Blue's music to play at the slower 50Hz speed of PAL systems. I finally released it a month ago along with PAL conversion of the first Lunar game and also Rise of the Dragon. Popful Mail is next on my list but I've been adding in the Un-Working Designs patches for their Sega CD games. I can't be dealing with paying to heal in Eternal Blue! I would have included Rise of the Dragon in your recommendations along with Snatcher 😜

Great list

I just figured that I had all the Sega Cd RPGs back in the days... I should have gotten a SNES, they had much more of these games that I loved so much!

De niño tuve la Mega Drive, pero me quedé con las ganas de tener un Mega CD. Fue muchos años más tarde que conseguí hacerme con dos unidades. Mis juegos favoritos de Mega CD son los siguientes: - POPFUL MAIL - EARTHWORM JIM: SPECIAL EDITION - LUNAR: ETERNAL BLUE - LUNAR: THE SILVER STAR - MUSHA ALESTE - VAY - BARI ARMS - SNATCHER - LORDS OF THUNDER - MICKEY MANIA CD - KEIO FLYING SQUADRON - SHINING FORCE CD - BATMAN CD - SONIC CD - FINAL FIGHT CD

Two games off the top of my head that you didn't include are Alshark and Burai. Those are definitely both RPG's by any definition of the word.

I REALLY hope these Sega CD games get translated at some point! We NEED more playable Sega CD RPG's in English!

I'm just listening to the music from Lunar. What else is there to say. Lunar. Lunar. Lunar.

Some good choices. I really liked Rise of the Dragon and remember trying to struggle through Heimdal. I didn't really have time for RPGs, I was so busy playing Sewer Shark.

Great list, except I would have put Dark Wizard at the top. Game still has a cult following all these years later. Its got its flaws, sure. But if any game deserves a revival from the Sega CD, its this one. But then, its really a gem for those who love games like Fire Emblem, Ogre Battle, Shining Force, and other "control a massive army that promotes and evolves" games. Very few, if any of these types of games lets you make your OWN army size (up to 100 active characters at once) and then have the AI match you, so that you tailor the difficulty by your desire for epic scale conflicts, or more "skirmish" battles. Its by no means perfect (The AI is dumb as a rock, and generally just makes a beeline for your ruler) but making custom characters, promotions with different class choices, monsters that evolve and get bigger- This one one of the first to do these things in an SRPG. And the music is just phenomenal. Not to mention people were still uncovering secrets 10 or more years after it was released. If someone "modernized" this game via remake or spiritual successor, it would be a massive hit in todays more SRPG friendly communities.

Dark wizard had better be on this list.... But that's more strategy isn't it.

Revengers of Vengeance actually reminds me of another game: on the N64 there is a fighting game called "Flying Dragon", it actually is two games in one, and the SD (Super Deformed / Chibi) fighting game actually has RPG Mechanics. You level up your weapons/armor, can bring 2 items into a fight, and visit a shop that has a .... friendly/hostile shopkeeper (based on whether you buy something every time you visit or not). You also get scrolls to unlock more special skills and...... basically, it's funny because once you get super high level (save on your controller pak) if you fight your friends, you'll probably curb stomp a player that has no save file. How's that for competitive fighting? LOL

Person: Tell me you're old without telling me you're old Me: *watches video about Sega CD game rankings*

I find I'm always opposite to most opinions. I love Lunar way more than Eternal Blue. Maybe it's because I never knew it had a sequel till I saw lunar complete and they announced they was also doing its sequel. I played lunar and Vay way back when they came out. They was my first rpgs so made working designs stand out to me so i dont fully understand your hate for them. This is my first video of yours so maybe it gets explained at some point. Either way I'm thankful for your video and emulation because I can not afford any lunar today and this video reminded me of the awesome dark wizard lol

You can move around in Eye of the Beholder with the d-pad you simply have to hold Start I think (check the manual of the game). Other great RPGs that are stuck in Japan are Illusion City and Shin Megami Tensei. There is also an interesting game called Armageddon something.

People put down the Sega cd for being expensive and having “few games” but this list provides hundreds of hours of entertainment. Per hour, the dollar amount would be $1-2. Certainly worth the investment I say!

Yay Wolf Team! I have a couple of their games on the PC-98, legendary studio.

I do love the list though. Dark Wizard May be my favorite on the list. The music alone is worth it.

Big fan of Falcom thank you for Popful Mail

Alshark is another Japan exclusive RPG on the Sega CD that always looked interesting to me. Wiah i could speak Japanese, for that and for the other games on the standard Genesis that remain untranslated.

Hate Working Design's game decisions all you like, but their CD images and manuals are fire.

a little nitpick: Eye of the Beholder is NOT a goldbox games, those were way before this one and a series on their own engine - the Gold Box engine

Aisle Lord reminds me of Sword of Vermillion.

I wonder if the Sega Mouse is compatible with Eye of the Beholder? If so it would be a worthwhile accessory purchase. I believe it's also compatible with Snatcher!

Lunar was my first rpg. Never played shining force cd. I thought it was going to be bad because of the square map. And i had just come off of... A year of my life to dark wizard. And it shining force was $35!! Most cd games were in the clearance bin for $10!! I am not made of that kind of cash.

Some real winners here. Already a Shining Force fan but am yet to play the Mega CD version and now I want to play all of the top 6 featured here.

Eye of the Beholder has mouse support but I imagine it doesn't let you 'duel wield'.

Popful Mail is probably the best game on the system!

You missed record of lodoss war. A japanese exclusive rpg for sega cd that closely follows the story of the anime.

Vay has a fan patch that reduces the amount of random battles. There is also an unworking designs hack that fixes the changes. Why not mention these?

Interesting Micronet produced Revengers of Vengeance - they also made one of the most ubderrated strategy games ever Warrior of Rome 2.

I got a Sega CD for my 14th birthday. I got Lunar with it. I didn't know you had to format the memory otherwise the final boss will freeze everytime.

Shining Force CD is #1 for me. I wish they also included the Final Conflict story into it for the completion.

Are you Canadian?

Dungeon master 2?? Didn’t see it.

Neither of the Lunar titles came to Europe... the only time one of these did was on the PSP so only the remake of the first. But yea, i would have liked if more of these would have been on the Mega Drive Mini 2... Till then i have a JP Mega Drive Mini 2 to play the Lunars and Popful Mail... as well as the PS1 Versions that i bought way after the fact to have a way to play them at all.

But I'm allergic to cats....

Why did you not mention dungeon master 2 skullkeep which is a much better game than eye of the beholder and also there was Heimdall, a very interesting Viking rpg with cool minigames like axe throwing while being drunk in game lol

Where's Dungeon Explorer? You mention Revenge of Vengeance and Dungeon Explorer is not RPG enough?

THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE AISLE LORD! Sadly the downsized since they installed self checkouts. Poor lords. Also yay! Some of these I'm very familiar with. Even if the controls for Eye of the Beholder are awful with that controller scheme, I wish I could get the saturn's graphics on my PC copy xD

You forgot Dungeon Master 2! Its a great classic dungon crawler. I cant belive you didnt mentation this RPG-gem. The Sega CD didt got many RPGs but you forgot one of the best for this system…🙄

these aren't all the RPGs on the Sega CD... where is Dungeon Master II?

Sega CD was NOT a bad system! I grew up with it and really enjoyed the selection of RPGs, adventure games, and FMV games on it! Also how could you have Eye of the Beholder on the list without also talking about Dungeon Master II: Skullkeep?

Shining Force CD might be good but the problem is that it is only battles. There are no exploration, like other titles have, such as Shining Force 2.

This is missing games, like atleast 2

See I dunno, I never found Vay to be egregious or difficult. I beat it without any trouble at all. Are you sure youre not just bad at RPG's? If Working Designs made it tougher then I say good! Cus I didn't notice anything overly tough about it, & I certainly wouldnt have wanted it to be any easier than it already was.

Never heard someone crap talk working design so much. What did they do to you? 😂

What a weird video. You mention only a couple Mega CD exclusive RPGs, even though there are, what, 20-30 of them? And out of all the ones you could have mentioned you bring up Shadow Run, a game that could easily be argued isn’t even an RPG. Then, when you rank “all” the Sega CD RPGs you fail to actually rank them all. Where is Dungeon Master II? Heimdall? And like your Mega CD mentions, you bring up Sega CD games that could easily be argued aren’t even RPGs. And you’re not even consistent with how you “choose” an RPG; if you’re gonna mention Snatcher you surely have to mention Space Adventure, as their gameplay is identical. A more accurate title to this video would be: Ranking a random list of Sega CD games.

Where is Shin Megami Tensei?

Your opinion instantly ceased to matter when you insulted Working Designs.

Shining Force CD was no where near as good as the original Genesis Shining games. Sega’s effort on SFCD was terrible. How do you make a game on a more powerful system and have it be 50% less of a game?!

good god your videos drag, i have to watch at x1.50 speed, speak faster

This sort of crap which lets me put the effort into unsubscribe to channels

gotta say, I prefer eternal blue complete on ps1