While the early history and distinctive traits of role-playing video games (RPGs) in East Asia come from Japan, many have also been developed in South Korea and in China.
While the Japanese video game industry has long been viewed as console-centric in the Western world, due to the worldwide success of Japanese consoles beginning with the NES, the country had in fact produced thousands of commercial PC games from the late 1970s up until the mid-1990s, in addition to dōjin soft independent games.[1] The country's computer market was very fragmented at first;[1] Lode Runner, for example, reportedly required 34 conversions to different hardware platforms.[2] The market eventually became dominated by the NEC PC-8801 and PC-9801, though with some competition from the Sharp X1 and X68000; FM-7 and FM Towns; and MSX and MSX2. A key difference between Western and Japanese systems at the time was the latter's higher display resolutions (640x400) in order to accommodate Japanese text which in turn influenced game design. Japanese computers also employed Yamaha FM synthesis sound boards since the early 1980s, allowing video game music composers such as Yuzo Koshiro to produce highly regarded chiptune music for RPG companies such as Nihon Falcom. Due to hardware differences, only a small portion of Japanese computer games were released in North America, as ports to either consoles (like the NES or Genesis) or American PC platforms (like MS-DOS).[1] The Wizardry series (translated by ASCII Entertainment) became popular and influential in Japan, even more so than at home.[3] Early Japanese RPGs were also influenced by visual novel adventure games, which were developed by companies such as Enix, Square, Nihon Falcom and Koei before they moved onto developing RPGs.[1][4] In the 1980s, Japanese developers produced a diverse array of creative, experimental computer RPGs, prior to mainstream titles such as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy eventually cementing genre tropes by the 1990s.[5]
Japan's earliest RPGs were released in 1982. The earliest was Koei's Underground Exploration, released in March 1982.[6] It was followed by Pony Canyon's Spy Daisakusen, released in April 1982; based on the Mission: Impossible franchise, it replaced the traditional fantasy setting with a modern espionage setting.[6][7][8] It was then followed by Koei's The Dragon and Princess (ドラゴン＆プリンセス) for the PC-8001 in 1982; it featured adventure game elements and revolved around rescuing a kidnapped princess.[9] Following a random encounter, the game transitions from a text adventure interface to a separate, graphical, overhead battle screen, where a tactical turn-based combat system is used.[10] Also in 1982,[11] Koei released another early Japanese RPG, Danchizuma no Yuwaku[12][13] (Seduction of the Condominium Wife),[11] a PC-8001 title that also featured adventure game elements in addition to eroge adult content.[11] These early experimental Japanese RPGs from 1982 are considered "proto-JRPGs" and predated the arrival of Wizardry and Ultima in Japan.[14]
In June 1983, Koei released Sword & Sorcery (剣と魔法) for the PC-8001, and it also revolved around rescuing a princess in addition to killing a wizard.[15] That same year, Koei released Secrets of Khufu (クフ王の秘密), a dungeon crawl RPG that revolved around a search for the treasure of Khufu.[9] ASCII released its own RPG that year called Arfgaldt (アルフガルド), an FM-7 title also featuring adventure game elements.[9]