Denial

Most Japanese RPG developers have admitted the Ultima series as a major influence. Yet their first RPGs, like Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, already seemed significantly different. Well I discovered one called Fharanx who influence is so obvious it's amazing. It's a much more serious theme, no anima/manga. In a way, a Holy Grail of Japanese RPG's.
http://www.generation-msx.nl/msxdb/softwareinfo/618
It was for the MSX system, developed by Enix and, get this, written in Basic. About 1/3 of the text is in English but the story parts are definately Japanese. There is a guy working on a translation right now. The ascii Basic code is only about 27k with an additional 15k data file for maps etc.
This would make for an interesting port for the Vic wouldn't it? A real Enix RPG for the Vic-20.

So.... What is RPG?

RPG = Role Playing Game

OIST = Oh, I see... Thanks

Or...

pretty cool! i guess the point is though that Enix greatly improved on this design the next year with Dragon Quest, then Square took it even further with Final Fantasy. the fact that they were different from the Ultima series (and clones) says a lot.

Is the source code available somewhere? I wasn't able to find it with, admittedly, a cursory search.