Of the many insidious consequences of the 7th generation of consoles amongst the most far reaching to this day is that sport and racing games remain largely relegated to the realm of franchise slop and 'bro gaming'
Once upon a time great game developers would occasionally just dip into this field and make something fun. I don't like golf, it's a beer and pretzels sport that inexplicably requires several square miles of terrain to play. Baseball is a great sport, everyone who plays it professionally has a fat ass and that's what it's all about, everyone who plays Golf professionally has a shrunken soul, Golf shrinks your soul, this is scientifically attested to. Nevertheless, Nazca, in the same year they released Metal Slug, also released a golf game, and it's cool! Just like when SEGA decided fucking squash was cool and made Cosmic Smash, which is cool. It's got that metal slug composer, beautiful terrain, mean level design and a level of immediacy and responsiveness you won't get from a golf game by a golf game company. defeat the programming, play a sports game, and no some indie game called like 'Lethal bullet league 20xx' and it's just pong with a gun and an anime girl doesn't count

Remarkably intact, but the worst of three ways to play the same game from a modern perspective. The first Fire Emblem has been remade not once, but twice, and both are preferable to the original for their own reasons, thus condemning the actual Famicom game to the Shadow Realm.

No matter how you decide to play it though, it's impressive how complete the first game is. The weapon triangle may not be in place (again, depending on version) and the story might only amount to a long line of places for Marth to parade into, but this is no proof of concept. Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light is, by Famicom standards, an extremely long and well considered, innovative game. If it didn't release in the same year as the Super Famicom and an extremely major Mario game and F-Zero, it'd probably be an obvious game of the year.