This Old Neon Forum

Torneko no Daibōken: Fushigi no Dungeon

The first Mystery Dungeon game, created by Dragon Quest IV developer Chunsoft and influenced by Rogue. Many subsequent Roguelikes would take mechanics and design elements from Mystery Dungeon rather than directly from Rogue. In this way, it kind of served to "firm up" the Roguelike subgenre.

Fushigi no Dungeon 2: Fūrai no Shiren

The second Mystery Dungeon game, this time using an original cast of characters. I believe Shiren is the only subset of official Mystery Dungeon games not to be based on other properties, so I'm nominating it as well. It got a pretty good remake on DS called Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer.

Chocobo no Fushigi na Dungeon

The third true Mystery Dungeon game, this one is even simpler and more streamlined—a Mystery Dungeon for kids, if you will. Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon on Wii (and it's own subsequent remaster on Switch and PS4) is a much later follow-up to this entry in the series and is a good example of how they dumbed the series staple mechanics down in a good way.

I think all three of these entries in the series deserve nominations for 1. inventing the subgenre with Torneko, 2. making it its own thing with Shiren, and then 3. giving it widespread appeal with Chocobo (the latter in particular opened the door for the Pokémon branded entries).

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Oh, also, Hexologic, which was my Neon Notables pick a while back. Can't believe I didn't nominate it already.

The Last of Us Part II (PS4)

Probably about 30 minutes left to make nominations that will get a game into the first round of pools. Compiling results now and then will be posting the final pool of the round.

EDIT: Too late, the final pools of round 1 have been generated! Stay tuned.