I'm curious if anyone is using these games as inspiration for your own work of art?
I'm taking a lot from Secret of Mana in how I eventually want the battles to play out, as well as the overall visual style (with a lot of my own twists).
From Earthbound I want to have the goofy sense of humor, interesting NPC characters, and intersting gameplay elements.
Suikoden has by far one of the best stories for an RPG ever. It's the first one where it had NOTHING to do with the end of the world and instead was about war, rebellion, and freedom. I was going to use those basic elements in my own game for the main story, but I'm not going to reveal more then that for now
Wild Arms had one of most interesting premises for a game. Set in an old west type world dealing with the invasion of demons (in this case a half man, half machine species that was far superior to the local inhabitants of Felagia) this game had one of the best character stories ever. Dealing with what individuality is, it sets the characters in a long quest to save the slowly decaying planet. Though the best thing about this game was it's unique character tools and puzzles. Some were true mind twisters and I plan to incorperate something just as in depth and cerebral as the Wild Arms series has been able to bring.
BTW, 2 of these were for the old PS1 and 2 were for the SNES, in case you want to reference them.