10. Final Fantasy Legend (Game Boy)

Square's SaGa series has gone on to earn a name for itself in its own right, but that's because not enough people remember its humble roots as part of the Final Fantasy canon. Starting off as the Final Fantasy Legend games on the Game Boy, the SaGa games managed to be wildly different than the traditional console Final Fantasies but still capture some of what is so great about the series.

Final Fantasy Legend was released in 1989, offering up the very best turn-based role-playing game on the system to that date. Choosing between eight character classes, players guide the four main characters through a massive world and a number of intricately crafted dungeons to find the tower that leads to paradise. The enemy encounters were randomly generated, a trend that had started in RPGs over a decade earlier, but the random encounters in Final Fantasy Legend were particularly well implemented. In fact, there probably hasn't been a game since to exercise that mechanic so well.

Final Fantasy Legend has some of the best graphics in the series.

Despite being monochrome, Final Fantasy Legend offered some of the best graphics the series has ever seen. The minimalist backgrounds seen during the fight sequences are reminiscent of a Mark Rothko painting, using the fewest strokes (or pixels in this case) to drive the point home. And though the game received a graphical update when it was released on the Wonder Swan Color, it was the appearance of the original game that was really quite so remarkable.

But Final Fantasy Legend also had the gameplay to back up those stellar graphics. Players could pick between three character races, mutants, monsters, and the uniquely conceived humans, and then level up their strength, agility, hit points, and mana accordingly. The mechanics of this system are traditionally RPG but were executed flawlessly on this tiny system. As you embark on your quest to locate paradise, you must find the King's sword, shield, and armor, which will help you get there. Though there have been many Final Fantasy games before and after Final Fantasy Legend, this unique little Game Boy adventure definitely remains one of the series' strongest.