BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA oh god dont make me laugh... RPG's have been around and popular in computing since the PDP's at the very least... Text RPG's were some of the first games available.

Has anyone mentioned magicka yet?

How much of it was acceptably mainstream then?

Commodores, speccys, amstrads all had RPG's all were big sellers world wide but then you might be so young you forget the first big game bubble (hint it burst with ET)

They were as mainstream as any computer games then. So yes, they were a mainstream genre within the relatively un-mainstream pastime of playing computer games.

The Final Fantasy series was directly inspired by Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest was inspired by the (apparently quite poor) Japanese translation of Wizardry.

To both of you, I'm actually only 22, 23 coming up soon. So yeah, I barely experienced the NES life cycle, by that point gaming was probably 80% home console between the NES, Master System..... and I think Atari popped out something else as well.

As far as mainstream though, I meant widespread, well known, well played. A high adoption rate basically, somewhere between a million and five million. I think now adays, a high attatchment rate would be five million+, where break even is between a half million to two million depending on the dev costs. Even during the NES, videogames were something you did heavily in the arcade, and you had Atari/Intellivison to fill the time at home in the 1970's onward, neither of which you can really say had complex RPG games.... Well, except for a few that I heard about through AVGN videos. So yeah, I based my thoughts with the assumption that console popularity didn't get massive until the NES. Most of this older stuff I've had little exposure to, even in books and reading that I own, so I can only assume off what I am aware of.

There's actually a variant of this in BG2. If you cast Heal on a mummy, it'll transform into a very confused townsperson and run off... he's in for a shock I'm sure. In the Infinity Engine games in general, though, the undead cause/heal switch doesn't actually apply even though it's a core D&D rule.

... and a similar mechanic was later introduced into World of Warcraft (for the Paladin class)

For that matter, which was the game that had the chance of turning a very specific strain of Mummies into Burning Skeletons if attacked with flame-enchanted weapons or spells? You know, because mummies are cursed, and it would be just too darn easy to set those ancient wrappings alight.

Final Fantasy VI featured a Ghost Train as a boss...and apparently a Phoenix Down is all that you need if you wanted to one-shot it.

Why use a Phoenix Down when you can piledrive it? :D

If I recall correctly, that boss had a couple of instant-death moves. Or the whole fight was time-sensitive or something. I don't remember it clearly since I was watching someone else play it at the time.