RetroforceGO! Episode 38: Phantasy Star

Woohoo, I look forward to this podcast all weekend

Hmm. It's 1:15 now... do I listen to it tonight, or just save it for tomorrow?

Hell, I'll be up for at least another hour writing this research proposal, so I guess this can't hurt (aside from it inevitably slowing me down, but who cares about that?).

Ha ha ha! You mean David Ellis' blog, right? Yeah, we all palled around that day. Fun day was fun.

Poor Chad! He sounds worse than he did on Friday/Saturday. Stranded in an airport for six hours? He should have driven home with us*!

*Actually probably not; we didn't get back to L.A. until like 9:30 PM.

Usually RFGO makes my Monday nights awesome...there was a void.

Instead I got the treat of it making my TUESDAY MORNING awesome...the void was filled.

Thanks!

on a side note Will Arnett talked about COD4 on Conan tonight. It was hilarious. I'm sure it'll make all the blog sites. Including this one, but you heard it here first.

Will Arnett talked about COD4 on Conan

It is so rare to see some SEGA love coming from the states.

oh man thank god, i was about to go insane like a crack whore 'cause i wasn't getting my fix

My trapper keeper (which I had to looked up because we just called them a friggen' binder! :p) as a kid was a surfer with a shark behind him, looking all mean and menacing and about to surf right out of it onto my desk. It was awesome. ^_^

Since he's sick shouldn't Chad's HP in the graphic there be really low? :p

Regarding Nei and Neifirst, I believe that Nei came to be as a result of her originally being part of Neifirst and not agreeing with Neifirst's ways. (Did that make sense?) Nei split from Neifirst somehow, but is still a part of her. While I've never gotten that far into the game, I've heard that you CAN defeat Neifirst, but Nei will die, anyway, since neither one of them can sustain life without the other still being alive. Of course, a more likely scenario is that Neifirst wins, still resulting in the death of both characters.

By the way, while Neifirst's faster leveling may sound like it's Sega's way of compensating you up until she dies, honestly, it makes sense within the context of the story, as Nei develops much more quickly than a typical person.

Man, looking back, one gets a good sense of how much your parents really loved you: $80 for all these awesome RPGs? We had like all of them. Every Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, every Phantasy Star, Sega CD and Lunar, Shining Force too. Wow . . .

I need to call my dad . . .

@RurouniQ

Ah, thanks for clarifying.

By the way, regarding the MMORPG term, not all online RPG's are MMO, as you don't interact with a large number of other players during actual game play. WoW, for instance, is MMO, whereas PSO (to the best of my knowledge, seeing as how you only have three other people with you at once during game play) isn't MMO.

Great show guys, nice to hear you all talk about games I'm currently replaying from back in the day. Thanks to Dyson for getting me back into Phantasy Star in the first place. I was grinding the hell out of the 2nd dungeon where you rescue the daughter of that dude that blocks the tunnel and got WTFPWNED by a couple of cloud looking things called Blasters after completely whipping ass on all the rest of the critters scattered about. Just goes to show how unforgiving this game can be at times.

If you're not super hip to oldschool JRPGs, I'd recommend starting with PS4, as it seems to be the easiest to get into and the most menu-friendly of them all. You also don't have to grind your ass off for quite awhile in that one. PS2 is good, but is as unforgiving as an Alaskan crab boat captain. Be prepared to spend HOURS grinding before you head into each dungeon.

Dyson, I wish I could have been on to help fill in the gaps on the online iterations of Phantasy Star. I played a bit of PSO and a lot of PSU. I'm not sure why I played them, mind you, but they're about the furthest thing from a true MMO. They're more like Diablo with a MMO-esque meeting system. Fairly mindless Hack'n'slash fare for the most part, and definitely not worth the monthy fees associated with them. However, PSU did come with a single player campaign, but it certainly wasn't anything on par with PS1, PS2, or PS4.

I look forward to hearing Toph scream "Best Week Ever!" next week.

poor chad T_T

but on the side note, "it's the best week ever!!!! cough cough cough" that was such great timing.

I love you guys so much. You are all so amazing!

Both Shining in the Darkness and Phantasy Star 2 are responsible for my obsession with JRPGs. An incurable affliction, but an affliction I couldn't imagine being without. Great stuff guys, as usual.

Also, SEGA 4 LYFE *gang sign*

Great show guys....Sad to hear about the death of Chad :(. Hope he feels better!

I never played the original Phantasy Stars, but I did play Phantasy Star Online on the Gamecube, both the dungeon crawling Ep 1&2 and the Card game Ep 3. What Colette said was COMPLETELY true...it was so much bigger in Japan, so that the majority of people playing were Japanese. Luckily I took a semester of Japanese, so I understood a little of what was being said. My roommate used to stay up at night cause thats when the Japanese were playing, which meant he could get more parties going.

More than anything, though, I remember the game being COMPLETELY BROKEN due to a duping glitch. I dont know if all versions had this, but the Gamecube let you duplicate any item in the game...one of the first moments I got online, another online player gave me an uber powerful weapon that was a very rare drop.

Anyway, it was an ok game, but not worth the money I put into it (monthly fees, keyboard etc.)...at least it enabled me to use the broadband adapter!

Listen to Droobies. If you're not super hardcore with old JRPG's I would start with Phantasy Star IV. It's more forgiving.

I'm not expecting a Phantasy Star V, I was just throwing it out there, but I know better :P

Thank you guys for reminding me how much I LOVED LOVED LOVED Phantasy Star back in the day. I will be getting some "not" emulators to playing the spin offs and text adventures.

For future reference I RSS a site called ROMHacking.net:

http://www.romhacking.net/ (duh) which is where I get news of sites translating old games. Thats where I got my translation patches for the PS games and is a good central place to look up translation sites for old "not" ROMS that never came out here.

Also screw all you haters for hating PSIII (I mean that in the nicest way). Yes Phantasy Star IV is my favorite and is one of my all time favorite games, but III had some nice charm to it and I actually liked the replay value.

Finally don't forget that the Sega Genesis collection also came out for the PSP and has PSIV. I bought that thing just for the Phantasy Star games. Although I really want to cheat my way through them again (I've already beat them the normal way). If anyone has any cheats for the PSP version (not Genesis not GBA) I would love a link.

Good show but PSO you didn't have to play online. I mostly played offline but it was still awesome when I was online (I thought the game was amazing but maybe that is just me). I thought you guys did the game justice (epically Colette).
Phantasy Star still awesome!!! (now what about next show, Dragon Quest maybe because this week was Phantasy Star)

First off, that pinata will ROCK!

I'm just starting with Phantasy Star II myself, Naia has turned me on to it. So far, it's shaping up nicely, especially considering it's a retro game. I'm a little sad I missed out on it when I was younger, because I had the patience to seriously level grind then. I'd set FFVII in the Mode 7-type view, hold down R and right on the d-pad to run in a circle on the overworld map for HOURS, fighting bad guys. Now, I think it's mostly that I don't have that kind of spare time, but I'll do what it takes to get through PS2.

Great podcast!

I think we need to see the PS1 and PS2 remakes stateside ASAP...

http://kneontransitt.blogspot.com/2008/03/phantasy-star-generation-1-2-sega.html

I love you guys. I really do. And I will always listen to and recommend this show to anyone interested inthe topic...but sometimes you let me down. I just listened to this show on my bike ride to work and about four times I nearly fell of my bike becasue I was yelling "Come on guys! Really?"

I feel like Rev Ant, How can you talk about something when half of you haven't even played this game? And I agree that the online games were weak...but you didn't really talk about the games and what was different. Colette's assholes experience was totally different than mine. when I played on Dreamcast I hated the American's but later on when it was mostly just Japanese players I thought everyone was really nice and the game was fun.

And NONE of you guys had heard aobut the SEGA modem games? REALLY? You guys come off as nothing more than Nintendo / Shooter fan boys and girls. If it isn't Nintendo or a shooter it's like you can't talk about it...total let down.

I love Phantasy Star and was really hoping to hear some great discussions...but instead it was like hearing someone talk about your favorite band after they just "discovered" them when the latest album came out and their talking all this nonsense.