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 Commercial Variants of Rogue in Japan? 

In 1991, there is ""Fatal Labyrinth"" (Genesis/Megadrive, 1991) which could be considered as the first commercial variants of Rogue (because it took a lot of ideas from rogue with some extra features) but it's not so good and successful.

""Fushigi no Dungeon"" series (starting from ""Torneko no Daibouken"" in 1993) themself are the most successful titles in Japan and start the trend of Japanese console roguelike games.

Fushigi no Dungeon have much tighter game balance, so that the challenge level is just right. Some role playing games (such as Climax Landers and Evolution) have also imported some roguelike concepts (primarily the randomly generated dungeon), but honestly not to any satisfactory effect, since the randomly generated dungeon plays little significance if battles take part in a different environment (namely, the orthodox RPG combat engine). Without its effect on playability, a randomly generated dungeon would in fact feel featureless and boring.

How they can be the variants of rogue?
- Feature one class which is warrior-type or Jack-of-all-trades. Supernatural powers are rely on items.
- Simple stats.
- Dungeon theme is a lot like rogue.
- Item sets like Potion, Wand (or rod), and Scroll. ""Furai no Shiren"" also add Pots which are work as containers or item manipulating tools.
- ETC.

Just some thought and review..."