Esper Dream is a superb real-time, combat-based Role-Playing Game for the Famicom Disk System. It was developed by Konami and released in Japan in 1987.

Esper Dream features real-time combat that takes place inside a small, gladiatorial arena. Every time you touch an enemy on the exploration screen, combat kicks in and takes you to this arena and you run around shooting things until combat ends. Not only that, but you can see the footprints of potential enemies walking around the landscape when you’re exploring, so you can avoid combat by not touching them – a nice feature in a game like this.

Although it was never officially released outside of Japan, an English fan translation of Esper Dream made its way onto the internet in 2003, making the game easier to play for non-Japanese speakers.

Esper Dream is mostly a simple find-and-fetch sort of action/adventure, and a very good one it is too, which is why it has been re-released a number of times on more modern platforms.

More: Esper Dream on Wikipedia