7. Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (Super Nintendo)

If there's anything that the Final Fantasy games are known for, it's being long and really difficult. So when Mystic Quest arrived on the SNES and was much easier than previous games, some people didn't know how to handle it. Those people are jerks. Mystic Quest is revolutionary because it opened up the Final Fantasy series (and console RPGs in general) to an audience that was put off by the difficulty of the other games.

As the best Final Fantasy game to grace the SNES, Mystic Quest maintained all of the great elements of the previous games in the series, while making them a lot more palatable for regular players. For example, Mystic Quest reminds you that random encounters are really annoying, and for that matter, quite illogical. Whoever heard of walking around an open environment and then monsters appearing from somewhere where there previously weren't any monsters? Not Mystic Quest. And as for wide-open environments? Mystic Quest wasn't having it. You were given a very specific route to take through the main overworld, which face it, is all you really want to do when you're playing a game anyway. All this randomness and wandering around can just confuse a person.

Mystic Quest still looks great.

Mystic Quest was so good that it was even one of the first Final Fantasy games brought to Europe, because European players have refined tastes and know a good Final Fantasy when they see one. And, if it weren't obvious by looking at some of the game's screenshots, Mystic Quest was also a fantastic looking game. The environments maintained a sort of uniform color to them, really giving you the feeling that you're trapped in this desolate world (Earth). The story also drove this point home, not bothering with any of the ridiculously weaving plots of other Final Fantasy games and sticking to the very basic hero-to-save-the-world plot. It's unfortunate that no game has really ever been like Mystic Quest since, because its visionary mechanics would have improved the many Final Fantasy games that have come out since its release.