Play Phantasy Star (Japan) Online

Phantasy Star on the Master System was way ahead of its time—this thing had first-person dungeons when most RPGs were still stuck in top-down mode. You play as Alis, out for revenge after her brother gets killed, and the story actually feels like a story, not just an excuse to grind. The pixel art still holds up, especially those anime-style character portraits during dialogue.

Yeah, the dungeons will melt your brain if you don’t map them out (seriously, graph paper helps), but there’s something satisfying about stumbling through the dark until you finally find the right path. And that soundtrack? Absolute bangers for an 8-bit system. It’s rough around the edges by today’s standards, but you can see why this spawned a whole series.