The Black Onyx

BPS, Sega · 1987

The game that opened the role-playing genre in Japan. Henk Rogers — later the man who brought Tetris out of the Soviet Union — wrote it in 1984 for Japanese home computers after finding that nobody there had played anything like Wizardry; it sold 150,000 copies and the Dragon Quest team named it as their direct influence. The player builds a party of up to five and descends into the dungeons beneath the town of Utsuro, hunting the black onyx that will break the curse holding the town in permanent night.

▶ Play The Black Onyx in the browser

Format

My card

Platform

Sega SG-1000 / SC-3000

Product code

C-72

Publisher

BPS, Sega

Year

1987

Hardware

32K ROM + 2K RAM

Loads straight into SE3K, an emulator of the real hardware: Z80 CPU, TMS9918A video and SN76489 sound, with the CRT picture reproduced by the shaders. Nothing to install.