It’s always a bit interesting to see Famicom titles, in particular ones that never made it out of Japan, show up on the Switch… especially when you can tell some care was put into at least making the game a bit more livable on modern hardware. There’s no question that in general gameplay, structure, and fundamentals that Sugoro Quest is a product of its time, but some small nudges to this port’s presentation at least help it feel a little less ancient.

The general story and format here are pretty basic, honestly making it more like a tabletop or board game than an RPG, but that at least gives it a bit of a distinct flavor. You’ll choose your hero by class, and set out to knock out the current boss at the end of their dungeon. To do this you’ll need to roll a die to see how many spaces you’ll move, with some just having a battle, some giving you upgrades to your equipment, and some that will allow you to heal. This element of randomness at least contributes a twinge of tension at times when you’re low on health, and are really hoping to land on a healing pool to help pull your run back together.

Combat also adopts a dice-driven mechanic, with both you and your enemy each rolling to see who comes out on top for each round. Whoever rolls higher gets to inflict damage, and if you tie you’ll need to keep rolling until someone wins, which can also ratchet up tension when you’re up to 3 rolls and the stakes are getting high. Unfortunately, there really didn’t seem to be any illusion that true randomness was truly at play, the rolls instead more often than not just seemed to generally follow a normal course of battle.

The shame here is that in many ways this feels like an early-ish version of a roguelike to some degree, with an element of randomness when you’re in the field and then an opportunity for meta progression in each class when you return from your latest adventure for upgrades. With just a little more work I think you could have converted it over, and probably made the feeling of randomness the original game was probably looking for a bit more prevalent. It at least plays differently than your typical RPG from that era, you’ll just have to walk in not really expecting all that much. It has its formula, and for the most part it just continues to repeat it, which then struggles to stay satisfying for long.