I finally got my hands on a copy of the original Phantasy Star and it was not cheap!
I was a huge, huge, fan of Phantasy Star Online when I was in high school. I used to play PSO BB well into 2015 on emulated servers and I still listen to the OST today. I can honestly say the game shaped me into who I am today, but I’ve never played any of the original series.
This is my first Sega Mark III game ever and I have to say the graphics are pretty impressive.
I’ve yet to beat the game, but it looks like this is a type of game where it really helps to talk to every pedestrian and walk into every house to gather as much information as possible.
The battle, so far, is kinda annoying because you can’t pick which enemy to attack. So when it’s clearly advantageous to beat a weakened enemy so that you have one less monster dealing you damage, the game will randomly pick the one that’s nearly at full health.
I was also surprised at how smooth the animation was in the 3D dungeon area, but it would really help if there was a map. I scribbled it down as I explored but I must have screwed up somewhere because my map ended up being twice as big when compared to something I found on the internet. Oh and the music in the dungeon is amazing! I recognized it right away because they used it in PSO too!
Again, it’s just such a pretty game!
And I love how manuals from the era had some much more info on it.
The US release I’d occasionally rent for my SMS always fascinated me though i was a bit too young to really know wtf to do. I remember it was very difficult and the random encounters were brutal, but there was so much to explore and see. And boy was the box art neutered to hell compared to this beautiful graphic design.
My friend had the Master System and I can credit Phantasy Star with sparking my love for RPGs. I didn’t even get to play it much at the time, but just seeing it was enough. It is a great looking game.
Yeah I’m surprised that the enemy sprites actually have a few frames of actual animation and the colours of their sprites are so vibrant. It’s a great looking game, for sure.
I was actually playing through it recently until I got a new handheld. Will probably restart but with the Sega Ages version.
The only thing I know about PSO was that you could use this bad boy:
Please tell me you had one!
Noooo I wanted one so badly but I was a poor high school kid. I even had to use something like NetZero to get a free dialup connection to my PC and route my DC’s internet connection through that just to play online.
I’d recommend using graphing paper (square grids). That got me through everything until the final dungeon (but it’ll still be manageable there!).
I’ll definitely be doing that next time! I grabbed the nearest notebook and it ended up confusing me even more.
I think it was that one where if you paused the game every step you could avoid random encounters.
You can do that?? I might have to because, as pretty as the pixel art is, it’s starting to get pretty damn annoying to see the monsters.
Dang love that OG paper and box that came with it. Man games used to have character included when you bought them physically. I miss it.
Yeah and I’d forgotten how many of the images in the booklets were quick doodles.
I enjoyed PSO. Like you said, the OST is good!
PSO and Jet Set Radio are probably my two all-time favourite OSTs!
