Play Tenchi Souzou Online

Tenchi Souzou came out on the Super Nintendo in 1995, published by Enix. It was part of that late SNES wave where developers were really stretching what the hardware could do, mixing genres in ways that felt new. You don't see many games that try to be a side-scrolling action game and a town-building sim at the same time.

You control a young god who must restore life to a barren world. The core loop splits your time between two very different tasks. In the action stages, you explore large, screen-by-screen areas, fighting monsters with a sword that has a deliberate, heavy feel to its swings. Your success in these dungeons directly fuels the other half of the game: using the resources you gather to guide human villagers, who then build and populate new towns across the world map. The difficulty comes from managing both halves effectively, as a struggling town won't produce the prayers you need to power up. It creates a unique rhythm of tense exploration followed by quiet, strategic planning.