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Torneko's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon (1993) — A Dragon Quest Shopkeeper Wears Rogue's Cruelty
On September 19, 1993, Chunsoft released Torneko's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon for the Super Famicom, smuggling the punishing design of 1980's Rogue into Japanese living rooms wearing the face of a beloved Dragon Quest shopkeeper. The Mystery Dungeon lineage it launched is still running today — as of December 2024, playable on Steam in Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island.
The Incredible Machine (1993) — The Toy Box That Made Rube Goldberg Playable
Released in 1993 by Dynamix and Sierra, The Incredible Machine laid gears, balls, fans and cats across a single screen and asked players to build Rube Goldberg contraptions. Assembled in nine months on a $36,000 budget, this toy box—together with its Free Form sandbox mode—became a headwater of the modern physics-and-contraption puzzle. This essay traces the twenty-one years until its own creators put Contraption Maker on Steam in 2014.
