Yoshi’s Island is peak Super on every level. That and Super Punch Out which looks almost like a Neo game or something.

Chrono is one of those games that was so popular it will always have lovers and haters who jump the dumbdumb train. It’s absolutely top tier though, despite some extreme clunkiness like that very very crappy race sequence. From a game play perspective FFVI is way better but both are amazing.

Super Mario RPG entertained me back in the day but now all that crappy Rare CG just makes me sick to look at. It’s one step away from being Donkey Kong Country RPG.

Playing Final Fantasy IV next to the original Final Fantasy III is interesting. Reportedly, FFIV began development as an NES game before they changed their minds a good way through and started over making it for the SNES; and when you look at the finished product next to its immediate predecessor this makes sense.

The class-change scene in FFIV really stuck with me. It's easy to undersell it if you just call it what it literally is ("a class change"), but it makes the redemption narrative hit home so perfectly. One of the great early examples of story informing gameplay and gameplay driving story.

Finished Final Fantasy 4. Really great game.

When FFIV came out people still had very low expectations for RPG graphics. Dragon Quest was selling very very well on the FC at that time and those all look terrible. The phrumph phrumph sounds and lack of flicker in FFIV and DQV probably seemed like all you’d ever want. FFV upped it a lot but FFVI and DQVI were the ones that really set the bar. After that, and especially FFVII, RPGs sort of became the place where you expected the BEST graphics.

That…screwed everything up, IMO. I’m more of a Tengai Makyo sort of guy…that is, you can put whatever you want in the game just don’t sloooooow it down with crap, please. Like a book, the best RPGs utilize your imagination via crude graphics and abbreviated scripts. With stuff like FFVII and up, extremely detailed graphics and interminable verbiage, there’s no need to fill in any blanks. It feels much more like you’re just watching things happen than participating.

The opera house scene in Final Fantasy VI is still one of the greatest moments in video game history, along with the blurry photos of queues outside Yodobashi Camera for Dragon Quest V on launch day.

my very first "serious" RPG.

back in the early-90's (around 1992/1993, IIRC) my aunt and her husband had a copy,
and i ended up trading SNES WANDERERS FROM YS to them for it.

the game was really well above me at the time, yet everything about it seemed so potently compelling even so,
that i couldn't stop picking it up here and there, despite sucking so hard.

it, and FFVI were RPG boot camp for me, ultimately.
beautifully compelling experiences that i spent my childhood basically sucking at, yet eventually mastered.

just a year or so back, in fact, i made a run through my PS1 FF CHRONICLES ports of both games,
acing each, and still finding them as overwhelmingly compelling and playable as ever...

The only port of any of that stuff I enjoy is the Wonderswan version of Final Fantasy I because it has way better graphics but keeps everything else the same including the D&D style magic system (no MP). I'm not sure I like the PS1 port of anything except the Namco Museum series which is really good and...Street Fighter Zero 3. SFZ3 has no perfect port or version except maybe (maybe) Upper on NAOMI so you're sort of always missing something no matter what you play.

incidentally, i just attempted the PS1 CHRONICLES remaster of FF1 earlier last year, and i found it's off-kilter Magic system most irritating indeed,
amongst several other singularly clunky/unrefined/outmoded aspects of the games' design ethos.

indeed, as (albeit modestly) dated as aspects of FFIV can come off as, -as a whole-
it indeed feels rather much like driving some sort of high-performance sports car,
when stood up diectly against the stone-age, primordial experience that even the fairly "refined" PS1 FF1 presents....

that's FF7 you are specifically citing, not C.T.

still, if you are referring generally to the minigames/gimmickry SQUARE was so fond of in the mid/late-90's,
then i suppose i can see where you're coming from...

That crap racing section is the reason I never bothered to raise Chocobos, and why I’m better for it. Skip the snow boarding, Tetra Master, etc and these games are much better.

Currently I’m playing Super Robot Wars T on Switch and it’s great.