Lists

13 games

D&D on the NES and SNES

The official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games, and the console RPGs that grew out of the tabletop. Roll for initiative on a controller.

Every game here is a tabletop session with the dice hidden inside the cartridge. If you want them back on the table, our sister site’s DnD Dice Roller rolls every die in the set.

  1. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Pool of Radiance

    1991 · NES · Famicom

    The first Gold Box computer RPG, brought to the NES. A party clears the Forgotten Realms city of Phlan block by block, with turn-based fights on a grid. The closest the console came to a real tabletop campaign.

  2. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Eye of the Beholder

    1994 · SNES · Super Famicom

    A first-person dungeon crawl under Waterdeep, ported to the SNES by Capcom. Map it on graph paper, the way the tabletop taught everyone to.

  3. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of the Lance

    1991 · NES · Famicom

    Dragonlance as a side-scrolling action game: eight Companions of the Lance, one on screen at a time, swapped in as the others fall.

  4. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Hillsfar

    1991 · NES · Famicom

    A Forgotten Realms city built from small jobs: ride, pick locks, shoot at the archery range, fight in the arena. Less a dungeon than a town that feels lived in.

  5. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: DragonStrike

    1992 · NES

    You are the knight on the dragon's back. An aerial shooter set in Krynn, and the odd one out on this list.

  6. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Dragons of Flame

    1992 · Famicom

    The sequel to Heroes of the Lance, released on the Famicom only in Japan.

  7. Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

    1987 · NES · Famicom

    Make a party, walk into a maze in first person, map it yourself. Built from tabletop habits, and far bigger in Japan than anywhere else.

  8. Ultima: Exodus

    1987 · NES · Famicom

    Ultima III on the NES: a party of four, classes and races, and a world to cross by land and sea.

  9. Bard's Tale: Tales of the Unknown

    1990 · NES · Famicom

    A party, a city called Skara Brae, and a bard whose songs are spells. Very much a night of tabletop play in a box.

  10. Might and Magic: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum

    1990 · NES · Famicom

    Six adventurers, a huge world and grid mapping in first person: the western computer RPG, reshaped for a controller.

  11. Dungeon Master

    1991 · SNES · Super Famicom

    The first-person crawl in real time: monsters do not wait for your turn. A huge step away from the dice, and still tense.

  12. Shadowrun

    1993 · SNES · Super Famicom

    Based on FASA's tabletop RPG: cyberpunk Seattle, magic back in the world, and a hero who wakes up in a morgue.

  13. Final Fantasy

    1987 · NES · Famicom

    Pick four from six classes, and cast spells from charges per level: the system D&D players already knew, carried into a Japanese RPG.