Best Retro Anime-Style Games

Retro Anime Games: Japan’s Game-Show Pipeline

The relationship between anime and video games in the 1990s was different from today: most anime games were licensed products built quickly to capitalize on series popularity, and the quality variance was enormous. The best anime-based games used the source material as creative fuel; the worst used it as a substitute for design. But alongside the licensed products, a generation of Japanese developers produced games with anime-influenced visual styles that weren’t licensed from specific series — games like Beyond Oasis, Gunstar Heroes, and the Tales series that channeled anime’s aesthetic energy into original game design.

For retro collectors, anime game collecting follows two distinct paths: licensed games tied to specific series (Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Naruto) and original games with anime-influenced aesthetics. The former require familiarity with the source material to fully appreciate; the latter stand alone.

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden 2 — The SNES Fighter

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden 2 (1993, Japan; fan-translated) was the best of the early DBZ fighting games on SNES and the template for subsequent anime fighters. The energy blast system — ki charge gauges, beam clashes, projectile exchanges — captured Dragon Ball’s specific combat aesthetic better than generic fighting game mechanics. The roster (Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, Cell, Trunks, and others from the Cell Saga) matched the series at its peak popularity.

The game was never officially localized to English, but fan translations made it widely playable. The DBZ SNES games’ failure to receive Western releases while the anime’s audience was at its largest is one of the era’s most significant missed localization opportunities.

Ys Book I & II — The TurboGrafx Action RPG

Ys Book I & II (1989, TurboGrafx-CD) was among the first games to use CD audio for a fully voiced, orchestrated soundtrack and was one of the most technically impressive RPGs of its release window. The dual-game structure — Book I and Book II played in sequence as a single story — and the bump combat system (colliding with enemies dealt damage rather than triggering a separate battle screen) gave it a pace that turn-based contemporaries lacked.

The anime-influenced visual style (character portraits, animated cutscenes, character designs from Masaya Hashimoto’s original illustrations) and CD-quality voice acting made Ys Book I & II feel like an interactive anime series at a time when the distinction between game and animation was just beginning to blur.

Beyond Oasis — Sega’s Zelda

Beyond Oasis (1994) by Ancient (Yuzo Koshiro’s studio) was Sega’s attempt to create a Zelda-style action RPG for the Genesis. The protagonist, Prince Ali, used a golden armlet to summon elemental spirits — water, fire, shadow, earth — each with distinct abilities and combat applications. The combat was more action-oriented than Zelda’s, with combos and knockback physics that suited the Genesis’s arcade heritage.

Beyond Oasis’s visual style borrowed heavily from anime’s depiction of Arabian/fantasy settings (Aladdin-influenced aesthetics, specifically) and produced some of the Genesis’s finest sprite work. The game received a sequel (The Legend of Oasis on Saturn) that expanded the formula; both are worth playing for action RPG enthusiasts.

Ranma ½: Hard Battle — The SNES Anime Fighter

Ranma ½: Hard Battle (1993) was one of the few Rumiko Takahashi anime adaptations to receive a Western localization in the 16-bit era, and Capcom’s game design expertise (they developed the game) produced a fighter that played better than most licensed anime fighters of the period. The gender-transformation mechanic — characters changed between male and female forms when splashed with hot or cold water — was incorporated as a gameplay element (different stat distributions between forms) rather than ignored.

The game’s roster covered the Ranma ½ cast accurately and the soundtrack captured the series’ comedic energy. For players who grew up watching the anime on Cartoon Network or VHS fansubs, it’s a faithful recreation; for fighting game players who don’t know the source material, it’s a competent but unremarkable SNES fighter.