While the SNES seems to get the most attention for its RPGs, the Sega Genesis has a ton of great roleplaying classics too. Many of the best ones, however, never made it to North America during the console’s original run. Here’s a few awesome ones you can try out on the Genesis that are definitely worth your time.

Today, we’ll look at three high quality RPGs for the Sega Genesis. These games have been translated to english and their Roms are easy to find. You can even get two of these on an actual Sega cartridge!

Beggar Prince

In 2006, Super Fighter Team released an actual Sega Genesis cart of the English translation of Beggar Prince. This was the first official release for the system in close to ten years! This fun little RPG stars a lazy prince who isn’t interested in his royal duties. After swapping clothes with a beggar who looks like him in order to get a free day in the city, he returns home to find that the King’s closest advisor has betrayed him and is taking over the kingdom. Now the lazy prince must embark on a quest to save his father’s kingdom.

The game has all the hallmarks of a good RPG. A nice animated battle system and beautiful backgrounds. I like the game’s humorous element as well. The translation is flawless and the game is a lot of fun.

Battle Barver Saga: Legend of the Magic Warrior

 

Battle Barver Saga is an interesting game with a strange history. Made by an unlicensed company in Taiwan, it blatantly steals artwork and music from several Square games. It’s clearly an attempt to compete with the Final Fantasy and Secret of Mana games of the SNES 90’s era.

That said, the graphics are beautiful and the story – while at times confusing – is interesting. Much like Soul Blazer, the game has you back-track quite a bit to it’s various towns and there is a lot of battles. Although you can see the enemies on the map, you usually can’t avoid them. If you wondered what a Squaresoft game on Sega Genesis would have been like, this is a good place to look.

Legend of Wukong

Another Super Fighter Team translation, Legend of Wukong was officially released in 2008 on a Sega Genesis cart. The game has cutesy chibi graphics and a story similar to Secret of Evermore. Wukong is playing around at his friend, the professor’s house when we accidently activates his time machine and is sent back in time.

The game’s colorful and silly style is a nice change of pace from “serious” RPGs and while the graphics aren’t the best you’ll ever see, there are some nice backgrounds in the fight scenes. This is a great game for the hardcore RPG fan.

 

Next week, we’ll take a look at some more traditional RPG games you can now play on Sega systems fully translated to english.