Probably will be a popular answer; Final Fantasy VII. Still one of my favorite games of all time too. I loved everything about this game, probably beat it like 3-4 times at 90+ hours each. I remember believing the rumors that if you leveled up Aries (Aerith) up enough, she would rejoin your party later. There was so much extra stuff to do; Golden Saucer, Gold Chocobo, Knights of the Round and defeating the Weapons. Bring on the remake!

yeah man to hell with the haterz, that game is great!

Final fantasy VII demo. Changed my life.

I hear ya!

It depends.  One of the Dragon Quest games on the NES was the first one that I officially played, but I never got more than an hour into the game.

Final Fantasy II is the real answer, the REAL FFII, you know, the one on the SNES.

I know what you're talking about!  Great game.  

I don't even need to say it

it's got to be Pokemon, right?

Blue or Red?

Actually Gold. By the time I saved up enough for one G/S came out

Dragon Warrior. I would alternate the playthrough with my brother. When he had time and I wasn't around then he would play it, and vice versa. He beat it. I remember at the time we were trying to find the last castle/boss, and one day he got home and just says "I've beat it", me "wha... show me!". He did.

yeah i wish i could have gotten more into it, as I didn't play another one until DQVIII.  

I think my brother, who is younger, got farther than me though. 

First one I watched someone play: Super Mario RPG

First one I played: Pokemon

And now, a list of JRPGs I have rented and had gifted to me

Rented: FFX, Earthbound

Gifted to me for Christmas one year: Golden Sun

I did own Pokemon Blue. 

Thus concludes the list of JRPGs I have owned, played, or rented. 

The following is a list of JRPGs I may be interested in getting:

The South Park ones.

Thus concludes the list of JRPGs I may be interested in getting.

South Park is a WRPG

It's turn-based, so even though it's developed outside of Japan, I consider it closer to most JRPGs sylistically. 

Lots of WRPGs have turn based combat while South Park has a few traits such as how it handles leveling up.

Huh. I just always thought of JRPGs as stuff like Final Fantasy with turn-based combat and WRPGs with live-action combat. My mistake. 

I'll just say turn-based combat tends to be my biggest turn-off about either genre and leave it at that. 

I've never played Earthbound.  I think I've sampled everything else.  

I hated it.

The first sorta RPG I played was Legend of Zelda. The first real JRPG I played was Final Fantasy VII and I frikkin' hated it it because I had no clue how to work the battle system and turn based battles made no sense to me. Oh how times changed. I went back to it a year later and loved it having learned how to work the battle system and how to read the screen when it was trying to explain what I should or should not be doing.

yeah that's how I was with earlier RPG's.  But with FFVII I was finally ready. 

Dragon Warrior. I got it with that really great Nintendo Power promotion (free game plus several free Power Guides) and really enjoyed it. I liked it so much I spent a lot of time trying to find  the sequel in stores, but I was never able to find it for sale anywhere.  I eventually forgot about this type of game and don't think I played another jrpg until Quest 64. That game was so horrible that I was scared off of the genre until much later. 

I just remember killing slimes.  That game was so colorful and saturated.  I wish I had played it more.  

My first RPG was Wizardry. As for first JRPG, um, not sure. Landstalker on the Genesis, if that's considered a JRPG. If not, Shining Force. Maybe. Can't really remember.

darnit Rangergirl, we're going to have to get Professor X and get deeper into your mind and solve this insane riddle! 

My first JRPG was Dragon Warrior on the NES.  My friend had it, and I'd go over to his house and we'd play it.  It was fun, but not enough to make me want to buy it.  Later when the SNES came out, I played FF2 (4) and was hooked on 16-bit RPGs from then on.

ha, I'm surprised by how many people mentioned Dragon Warrior.  Must have been a bigger game than I originally thought.  I remember playing it on the TV in my grandma's bedroom.  

One of the reasons why Dragon Warrior was so big was because that at one point, Nintendo Power was giving away free copies of the game if you subscribed to the magazine.

huh.  maybe that's how I got a copy. I was definitely a rabid subscriber.

Shining in the Darkness on Sega Genesis. I didn't even know the term JRPG at the time, I just thought it was a cool RPG. I vividly remember the tuning fork riddle in the game. You had a room full of large tuning forks and had to repeat a melody by hitting them in the right order. I thought that was really neat at the time. 

that does sound neat.  I never played that.  I just wasn't into JRPG's back then, and didn't play Phantasy Star IV until later on emulation.

I think the next JRPG I played was Chrono Cross for some strange reason. I distinctly remember where I bought it and it was a 2CD case. I didn't finish it for some reason either. I don't think I even thought about any game being distinctly Japanese until Dragon Quest VIII or Culdcept (which isn't strictly a RPG). 

Pokemon Blue was my first entry to JRPG's. I was expecting something like the anime, much more deeper. Loved it. Loved taking my GBC everywhere, even at school. While the formula got better and better as time went on, I still hold the originals close to my heart for introducing me to a new genre.

I haven't gotten into a pokemon game yet. but I keep on promising myself I will.  

I would say in terms of a traditional experience I would say Chrono Trigger for SNES. My mom bought it for me because I read something in Nintendo Power about it and really wanted to be a frog. So Christmas time came around and I started playing. I never got real far. I was 7 at the time so I got lost by the time I was first brought to prehistoric dinosaur times, but I loved every minute. I remember spending a lot of time just playing the carnival and bike racing games.

that's a great game.  Just something special about it. 

The first jrpg I played was Dragon Warrior (NES).  It was a bit much for me.  I played Final Fantasy (NES) and it was too hard.  The first rpg I can say I enjoyed was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons on the PC.  I think it was Pool of Darkness.  

ah, Pool of Radiance!  I had that game!  It was a little beyond me at the time, but I kept on trying to play it. I was really into the idea of D&D back then.  

The most surprising thing about this blog is how many people named Dragon Warrior, and how most of us couldn't handle it at the time.  And yet it's spawned so many classic games now.  Wow.  

In recent years, I've put 100s of hours into Dragon Quest.  I finished DQ9 (3DS), DQ4 (DS), DQ6 (DS), and I'm currently playing DQ5 (DS).  I really hope there is a US release for DQ8 (3DS).  I played that game on the PS2 and didn't finished it.

I didn't finish it either.  Stuck on last boss (before post-game stuff).  I'd love to play it again, one of my favorite RPG's ever.  

Pool of Radiance and the other Goldbox games still have some of the best tactical combat you can find in CRPGs. This kind of combat (with individual unit movement) never caught on in Japan in mainstream JRPGs, which is why I came to prefer games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, etc.

I love Tactics games too.  I never thought to compare it to games like Pool of Radiance.  Interesting.

My first was phantasy star 4. Like your story, I was too young to really understand it so I didn't come back to it for a while. My second was FFVIII, which I immediately fell in love with as a child, and led me to play FFVI and give phantasy star 4 another go. Man I love that game.

Phantasy Star 4 is really cool.  Kind of underrated.  Tough though.  Great soundtrack. 

Dragon Warrior on NES. However, I also played it alongside the NES version of Ultima: Exodus, which had SD Japanese RPG graphics even thought it was a port of a Western RPG and even the NES version was produced in Texas rather than Japan. I also played a couple of Falcom games on NES. I didn't play a Final Fantasy title until FFVI on the SNES in 1995.

How far did you get in Dragon Warrior?

I've beaten it thanks to how super-straightforward it is, for the most part, although it does have some clever bits.

I also liked how they managed to slip implied sex past Nintendo's censors. You can take the girl in the first village, the Princess, or both to you to the Inn (threesome!), spend the night, and the innkeeper remarks on how much noise you made last night. LOL.

ha ha pretty amazing that got past Nintendo's censors.  That's really funny. 

I really can't say. I'm not big on RPG's but I own a couple over the various consoles. The one that really sticks out to me is Persona on the original Playstation. I bought it from the Swapmeet for $5 and I think it was going for $30-40 at the time. 

I think I've tried that somewhere.  Didn't get too far.  That's a cool game to own though.