Did you hear about the removed enemy in PSIV?

I recently learned that there is an enemy in Phantasy Star IV that was removed for the North American release of the game. There are two versions of the enemy, on in the cave below Esper Mansion and one in the last few areas of the game. They appear in random encounters in those sections of the Japan release. I guess they were removed because they were determined to be too adult oriented for the North American market. The monster is shaped like a woman, kind of like the final form of the Profound Darkness, but without all the spikes and stuff that has.

It's amazing that even after all this time, there's still new stuff to learn about this game.

No Way! Interesting how after all these years, there's still new discoveries being made. You should definitely post a pic if you ever manage to get your hands on one.

I've heard before that the US release contains extra scenes that the JP one doesn't- guess they had to balance that by taking things out of the US.

Wow, that's awesome. I was sure everything in the game had been found by now. Yes, definitely got a picture of it up sometime if you can. We'd all like to see that, I bet.

Wow! It's great! Do you have screenshot or save file of this moment?

I took quite a few screenshots of both enemies. When I have more time later, I hope to make animated images of them and add a page to the PSIV section of the site. You can't tell this very well from the screenshots, but they have glowing auras that change color. Here is the first one, from the Esper Mansion cave. It is pretty weak, like the Phantom monsters that also appear there. The second monster (shown below) has three attacks and is much stronger. They are still not very tough, though.

Apparently, both monsters exist in the US game but have been disabled from appearing in battles. The first one is called "Acacia" ("Akasha" might have been a better translation, from what I've heard) and the second "Shadmirage" (or, Shadow Mirage).[br]


I don't have save files from the Japan version on hand at the moment. I usually use save states in the English version, which freeze the Japan game. If you get a late game save state from the Downloads, load that on an English ROM, and then save through the in-game menu, you can use the resulting .srm file with the Japanese ROM. I used that to jump ahead to the end of the game.
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I've heard before that the US release contains extra scenes that the JP one doesn't

[br]I've heard that, too. One of these days, I'd like to play through both and find out what was added.

Wow... Very, uhm. Busty? Sorry, couldn't help it.

But you know, I'm surprised they kept the Profound Darkness since its final form was nude, too. Considering that this enemy was removed for that assumed reason...

Well... I can see why they were removed! That would have raised the rating a few notches! (Were there ratings was PS4 came out?)

These look a lot more human-like than the Darkness. It had all those spiny protrusions coming out of the back, so it's more clearly a monster.

Heh, yeah, they are rather... extreme, for a game from that period. I was surprised when I saw them. I can't blame Sega for taking them out, though. That could have caused a big uproar (or another, since a few games already did) in the US back then.

I always thought it was kind of strange that there was only one enemy in the Esper Mansion cave when I first played PSIV. I feel better knowing that there was another, even if it didn't show up.

Wow, quite fascinating! Thanks for sharing this, Thoul.

You know, I don't really see what the big fuss is, considering many of the female monsters in PSIII were nude or semi-nude. So what gives, Sega!?

A good point actually. Though maybe Sega had some complaints about the ones in PS III and had to change them out, that's my guess. But it could probably be to do with some age rating nonsense too. While it may not be as bad as it can be today, the censorship stuff was probably still a pain for developers even then.