Squaresoft turned Nintendo‘s figurehead character, Mario, into a level-grinding RPG in 1996, much to the delight of games-players world wide.

All the elements of a great dungeon-crawler are here, including turn-based combat, shops, magic, potions and monsters – all held together with a bit of Nintendo magic.

Only thing that does date Super Mario RPG are the pre-rendered graphics, much beloved of developers in the 1990s, but looking quite lame these days. How were they supposed to know they would date?

Graphical gimmicks aside: Super Mario RPG is still a brilliant game. Like an early Final Fantasy game with a Mario wrapper. And still fun to play nowadays.

More: Super Mario RPG on Wikipedia