{"id":397752,"date":"2025-10-31T08:06:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T08:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/article.php?article_id=2174269"},"modified":"2025-10-31T08:06:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T08:06:00","slug":"30-years-on-the-story-behind-one-of-the-mega-drives-best-rpgs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/30-years-on-the-story-behind-one-of-the-mega-drives-best-rpgs\/","title":{"rendered":"30 years on, the story behind one of the Mega Drive&#8217;s best RPGs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/30-years-on-the-story-behind-one-of-the-mega-drives-best-rpgs.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Mega Drive owners didn&#8217;t often glance enviously at their Super Nintendo friends. After all, we had amazing platform games. We had fantastic shoot &#8217;em ups. We had great arcade conversions. But there was one thing we didn&#8217;t have: the sprawling RPGs of the Nintendo console, such as The Secret Of Mana, Final Fantasy and The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past. True, there were Mega Drive RPGs, but none with quite the epic feel and expanse of their Nintendo peers. Then, for a brief period in the early 90s, it didn&#8217;t matter. Because we had Buck Rogers: Countdown To Doomsday, a sci-fi RPG the likes of which never again appeared on the Sega console.<\/p>\n<p>Countdown To Doomsday began life in 1990 as a PC, Commodore 64 and Amiga game. Released as part of its Gold Box series by Strategic Simulations Inc. (better known as SSI), the game was based on TSR&#8217;s Buck Rogers XXVC table-top role-playing game, itself a blending together of the famous sci-fi character with the Dungeons &amp; Dragons second edition ruleset. As was common at the time, Countdown presents a first-person exploration view combined with an isometric display for combat. Yet while the original has its fans, it&#8217;s the Mega Drive conversion, released a year later, that is the most loved. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/articles\/2021-10-31-30-years-on-the-story-behind-one-of-the-mega-drives-best-rpgs\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/articles\/2021-10-31-30-years-on-the-story-behind-one-of-the-mega-drives-best-rpgs\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mega Drive owners didn&#8217;t often glance enviously at their Super Nintendo friends. After all, we had amazing platform games. We had fantastic shoot &#8217;em ups. We had great arcade conversions. But there was one thing we didn&#8217;t have: the sprawling RPGs of the Nintendo console, such as The Secret Of Mana, Final Fantasy and The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past. True, there were Mega Drive RPGs, but none with quite the epic feel and expanse of their Nintendo peers. Then, for a brief period in the early 90s, it didn&#8217;t matter. Because we had Buck Rogers: Countdown To Doomsday, a sci-fi RPG the likes of which never again appeared on the Sega console. Countdown To Doomsday began life in 1990 as a&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerpt-more\"><a class=\"blog-excerpt button\" href=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/30-years-on-the-story-behind-one-of-the-mega-drives-best-rpgs\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":397753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eurogamer"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>30 years on, the story behind one of the Mega Drive&#039;s best RPGs | Arcader News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mega Drive owners didn&#039;t often glance enviously at their Super Nintendo friends. After all, we had amazing platform games. 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