Below the Cut: Cowboy Kid (NES)

Interesting art direction (Source: Wikipedia)

Cowboy Kid - Rating(5 RPP)
1) 0 - Character Advancement: practice/experience based advancement, stat or level increases, multiple classes or characters, customize characters
2) 0 - Combat: character stats used for combat, additional combat options, turn based
3) 1 - Items and Equipment: store to buy and sell, equipment decisions, item decisions
4) 2 - Story: main story at the forefront; world full of hints and lore; descriptions for objects, people, and places
5) 1 - Exploration: open world from the beginning, visited locations remain open
6) 1 - Quests and Puzzles: side quests not related to the main quest, puzzles and riddles to solve

Welcome to the wild west, where if you have money, health, and stores, you get to call the game an RPG. Simply put, the game hides its levels by placing the duty of sheriff on a new stranger in town, and you select a "quest" to capture a bandit. Put another way, it's a simple action game with no character development, combat based solely on weapons, and even some scrolling-shooter levels. I can only imagine someone was confused by the inventory plus health related items and slightly open world, and decided that was enough to label it as having RPG-elements. This categorization has since been corrected on MobyGames.

The setting is interesting for an RPG, and one that's hardly ever used to my knowledge. It seems a wild west RPG is ripe for the making. The only RPG that comes to mind is the Wild ARMs series, but an action-RPG based on the western theme seems to be missing.