Crosmando: I'd recommend getting the "complete" pack on steam, has all the games in one package.
Also Shining Force is good
tinyE: I got the complete pack on CDrom from Amazon and it was slighly less expensive than Steam, if that matters.
On a side note, what exactly is the point of Sonic? Sure, I enjoy playing it but I can never figure out if I'm playing it well!
In Sonic, you do well by progressing. You do super-well by getting Chaos Emeralds. You can play for points, but the real "points" is how many Chaos Emeralds you can secure before you beat the game.
I've been down to 1 or 2 left, but I never got them all.
As far as RPGs go, several people listed them. Here are my favorites:
- Sword of Vermillion: Back in the day, it was super-awesome-epic. I had the guide for it, so it helped me along in some tough spots. But it's a good game with great boss fights. If you have the save state feature, that will be very useful for this game. It can take a few hours to get to a boss, and then you'll die against them a dozen times trying to beat them. Back when I was 10 I had all the time in the world to do it. Now, I'd just throw the game away for that poor design. But Save State fixes that (my XBOX Genesis collection has the save state feature, so hopefully yours does too)
- Shining Forces -- As others said, great games.
- Fatal Labyrinth: It was the first Rogue-Like I had every played. I enjoyed it. In fact, that's the game that took me away from Skyrim. But I like old-school.
- D&D Warriors of the Eternal Sun: Mix of overhead DnD 1st edition and 1st-person dungeon crawling through square-based dungeons. I love this game. I played it as a kid and as an adult. I liked it more as an adult and I beat it at least 50 times faster.
- Might and Magic (which is really M&M Book 2 for the PC). This game was my life for far too long (~10 years or so on and off and restarting a lot). But I finally beat it! It's classic dungeon-crawling turn-based RPGing.
- If you can call it an RPG, Ecco has some neat moments. It'd be great if they restarted that whole franchise and just removed the crappy game design from it. The controls are abysmal.
- Oh, and one last one (and probably the best IMHO): Rings of Power. You probably don't have it on your disc, but it's one of the best open-world video games ever -- and most definitely in its day (again, totally my opinion).
As a side note, the biggest surprise to me on my XBOX collection was a little game called Flicky. I thought it looked like it was for 2 year olds but I absolutely loved it. It's very challenging-arcade-feeling. Worth a few minutes of time to try out.
