NES

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar

In Quest of the Avatar, the rewards are high if you can endure the early going. While it can become painfully boring to get your party assembled and master the virtues, once the dungeon crawling begins, this game picks up and becomes fun and memorable as you stop piddling around with beggers and blood donations and start scrambling through mazes battling powerful monsters for great rewards. As a friendly piece of advice, if you want to get the most out of this game, don't even look at its instruction book. That 80-page monstrosity serves as a mini-walkthrough, giving hints (and, at times, answers) to many of the greatest puzzles AND is packaged with a world map that also gives you floor layouts for all but the final dungeon. When it's so rewarding to solve a game's mysteries (and let's face it, becoming a holy icon for the common man to follow is pretty damn cool), it just seems kind of lame to spoil that experience by having your hand held for most of the trip.

A fantasy quest like no other awaits you in Ultima: Quest of the Avatar, FCI's second NES installment of the famous role-playing game series. Quest of the Avatar comes closest to true role playing, in that every action by you character affects his destiny, including casual conversation with strangers. Prepare to enter one of the most detailed and challenging worlds in computer role playing, Britannia, as you begin the Quest of the Avatar!