How big are the planets?

A random thought came to my mind tonight. I was looking at some old maps from previous Phantasy Star games and I just thought, how big are the worlds. Its understandable due to the Genesis cart limitations, but looking at the Phantasy Star IV Motavia map, you basically get a large continent the size of.. lets say Asia, with small islands about the size of Japan nearby.

Now just thinking theoretically, if the games were flushed out more, do you think there would be more continents? Could there be more traces of Motavia that the Great Collapse has hidden from us on the other side of the planet? Its just a curious thought.

the hovercraft takes you all the way around the planet, there is no other side.

the planets are small due to them being so young.

Planets in PSIV are quite big enough, standard of a 16 bits RPG. and if you look back at PS1, I'll say they're quite big too for 8-bits standard...what I always find weird though is Motavia (Mota) in Phantasy Star II...Look at the map. One big chuck on land, and then everything else is water. It's like Motavia dry land is just one big island. Mother brain must have done a lot of works during the time she was in the system

Look at it this way: There's plenty of other towns/cities on Motavia and Dezolis, they're just not on the map. (Examples from the PSII Text Adventures: Kvarts, Forest Town, River Town, Lume, Romtat, and Sophia)

They're small.

Considering the hovercraft et al can travel around Motavia within a minute or so.

That is, unless they travel at or near the speed of light, which... they don't. As far as we know.

Then again, Phantasy Star is sci-fi...

Ugh!

Well, going by sizes, the hovercraft is also the size of a small town. That might let it move pretty fast.

I think Motavia is pretty big, especially taking into account towns we don't always see like Snorb mentioned. Dezoris seems much smaller. Of course with more powerful systems or media that could hold more, we'd get much bigger worlds.

Yeah all the planets were quite small. Personally I’d say Motavia was the biggest it seemed to have the most to explore. I’m sure if Palma wasn’t destroyed and was accessible in PSII or IV it would also be fairly big as it was the most populated planet before its destruction.

Thoul wrote:

Well, going by sizes, the hovercraft is also the size of a small town. That might let it move pretty fast.

I think Motavia is pretty big, especially taking into account towns we don't always see like Snorb mentioned. Dezoris seems much smaller. Of course with more powerful systems or media that could hold more, we'd get much bigger worlds.

Momentum equals mass times velocity. Large size alone (larger with more mass) does not determine speed; actually, small tends to be fast, scientifically... small takes less energy to move. Take tachyons, for instance, extremely tiny subatomic particles which travels faster than the speed of light.

I'm with Lucas and ThugsRook that the planets are relatively small in size.

If a vehicle is that large, though, it has to have some pretty powerful engines to be able to move at all. Considering we're talking about technology that can produce vast amounts of energy from small devices (like Wren's chest cannon capable of destroying a space station) I think the energy output of a vehicle like the hovercraft could be pretty high.

But my main point was really that we can't judge the size of the world by things like the representation of the vehicles or people on the world map. After all, Chaz doesn't suddenly grow into a giant as tall as Krup or the land rover when he walks outside a town.

Thoul wrote:

After all, Chaz doesn't suddenly grow into a giant as tall as Krup or the land rover when he walks outside a town.

LOL. Good point.