The Black Onyx

 It's a bit hard to believe now, but back in the early '80s RPGs were a fairly unknown genre in Japan; Dungeons and Dragons hadn't been brought over and only a handful of people were aware of computer games like Ultima and Wizardry that were making a splash overseas.  Seeing opportunity, one Henk Rogers (who would later have a very prominent role in introducing Tetris to the wider world) would develop and release a D&D-inspired RPG and release it on the PC-8801.  That game was The Black Onyx and it was a huge hit, selling about 150,000 units (with many more likely playing it through pirated copies) and getting numerous ports and expansions in subsequent years.   It was a pretty full-featured game for the time, too - you could choose a wide assortment of heads and bodies to make custom avatars, and equipped gear would even show up on their sprites.  It had full-3D mazes, enemy groups with their own visible avatars, and even the ability to try and talk your way out of battles.  While there is no magic system or ranged weapons, there were shops to upgrade equipment, pubs and stores to interact with NPCs, and even a bank to store money so it wouldn't get stolen by robbers.  So if you're a fan of Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest or basically any other game that can trace its lineage back to D&D, well, here's a link in that chain you may not have even known about until now.

Developer: Bullet-Proof Software
Publisher: Bullet-Proof Software
Released: 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988, 2001
Platforms: PC-8801, MSX, FM-7, SG-1000, Famicom, Game Boy Color

Sundog: Frozen Legacy

A game that I'd never heard of until recently, though after reading an interview in which Richard Garriott named it his favorite game of all time and seeing it listed as an inspiration for Bethesda's upcoming Starfield, I decided to give it a go.  After playing it I can certainly see why two major names in gaming cited it as such a big influence, as it's got quite a lot going on for a 1984 release.  Built on a similar premise to Elite (released the same year), you start with only a beat-up spaceship and a pocketful of cash, and set out to fulfill your late uncle's final contract.  To that end, you must buy and sell commodities to make money, gradually fix up your ship and its many broken parts, and seek out a number of would-be colonists in cryogenic stasis on numerous planets in order to help them form a new colony for their religious order.  Of course, it's never as simple as it sounds - in addition to fluctuating market prices, you constantly deal with ne'er-do-wells from street muggers to space pirates who want to rob or outright kill you.  Sometimes you can bluff your way out of a fight, but more often than not you'll have to resort to good old gunplay to neutralize the threat.  And of course, you have to manage your own health and replace or repair broken parts to keep your ship running, or your mission is all for naught.  Sundog has a surprisingly simple interface in spite of its complexities, using only a two-button joystick or mouse; in fact, it's one of the first games I'm aware of to be entirely mouse/joystick driven with no option to use the keyboard, so it's relatively easy to pick up and play, especially for an '80s computer game.  An influential and very ambitious game with some elements that haven't been replicated in any other game to date, but it also falls prey to hardware limitations of the era - the overall gameplay is very slow-paced and repetitious, and the end goal boils down to little more than a very long game of tedious searching, clue chasing and trial-and-error.  Two more sequels were also planned to expand on the game's story and universe, though owing to Bruce Webster's departure from FTL and the runaway success they experienced only a couple years later with Dungeon Master, they ultimately never materialized.  A game worth a look as a historical curio for serious RPG fans, though fans of these type of in-depth market and spaceship sims have plenty of more sophisticated modern alternatives these days.

Developer: FTL Games
Publisher: FTL Games, Accolade
Platform: Apple II, Atari ST
Released: 1984, 1985

The Tower of Druaga

An enormous hit in Japanese arcades but a pretty big flop in North America and elsewhere, Tower of Druaga is a rare example of an arcade dungeon crawler, putting heavy focus on battling enemies and discovering hidden secrets that upgrade your character's abilities to be better prepared for later challenges.  You really do need them, too - you start off atrociously slow on your feet, and your only way of killing enemies is by holding out your sword and running into them, done by holding the button down and waiting nearly a full second for your character to lower his shield and ready his sword.  Keeping it ready all the time isn't an option either, as you need your shield up to block enemy projectiles.  There are a surprising number of powerups to find - weapon and shield upgrades, boots that make you move faster, a pickaxe to knock down walls, items to show invisible enemies and light up dark floors, and even draw your sword more quickly.  However, they're all hidden behind secrets, usually with fairly obscure unlock conditions, making this a game that encouraged players to share knowledge with one another and cooperate to reach the end (but only after hours of trial and error and putting many, many coins into the machine, of course).  It also spawned a sequel and a prequel in the following years, making this one of the very first Japanese RPG franchises.  Even if you've never played any of those, though, you may have seen traces of it in some other Namco-published games like Tales of Destiny (as a similarly-designed 100 floor bonus dungeon), Mr. Driller: Drill Land, Soul Calibur III or Baten Kaitos.

Developer: Namco

Publisher: Namco

Released: 1984
Platform: Arcade, MSX, Famicom, FM-7, Game Boy, PC Engine, X1, GameCube, various Namco Museum compilations and digital platform releases.

Hydlide

 Hydlide is a legendarily bad game among western gamers, though its reputation is somewhat undeserved - the game was originally created for Japanese computers in 1984 but was ported over to the NES five years after the fact (and two years after Zelda), so of course it was very lackluster in comparison.  Its incredibly limited animations and music, bloopy sound effects, password based saves and much choppier movement were not exactly seen favorably, but its most derided element is its contact-based combat.  Simply put, the player runs straight into the enemy, trading a dozen blows or so per second, until either they or the enemy falls (though you can somewhat tilt this in your favor by attacking the enemy from the back or side).  Your reward for a victory is one tick on your experience bar and the opportunity to retreat onto grass and wait for your HP to refill to try again.  Then you add in cryptic puzzles, cheap deaths from innocuous things like touching the wrong tree or being eaten by a rock (yes, really) or entering a dark room without a light and dropping dead, and you have a very frustrating experience.  It may have been a well-received game in Japan in 1984 and an inspiration for the Ys and Zelda franchises, but it's one that's best left as a historical footnote, because it's not any fun to play today.

Developer: T&E Soft
Publisher: T&E Soft
Released: 1984, 1989
Platforms: PC-6001, PC-8801, MSX, MSX2, PC-9801, Sharp X1, PC-66, FM-7, Sharp MZ-2000, Famicom, NES