It was great reading all your memories guys and here’s mine it’s quite long just to warn you:
I actually knew about Phantasy Star long, long, long before I even played a game in the series. Back when I first started getting in video games in like 1996, I used to always play my Dad’s Sega Master System but he only had games like Alex Kidd and Sonic for it no RPGs. But on the back of the Master System box was a screenshot of Phantasy Star it had the Crawler in it (that brown desert worm). I didn’t really know what kind of game it was because at the time the screen shot only showed a large worm and some text. Anyways that’s when I first knew of Phantasy Star.
Next my Aunty got herself a Sega Megadrive in the same year because they were pretty much dying out in Australia by then. The console came with a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and inside the case was a large poster of sonic but on the back of the poster was a list of games available for the Megadrive. In the list was both Phantasy Star II and Phantasy Star III (PSIV wasn’t there surprisingly ). I immediately recognised the name because of the first game being advertised on my Dad’s Master System box. But there was no screenshots for either of the games instead there was only artwork that you see on the cases of the games. So I still never really knew what kind of game Phantasy Star was but I did discover by looking at the artwork of Phantasy Star 2 on the poster it had to be a type of science fiction game (I was kinda right).
Then I never really heard much of Phantasy Star again for a while. Well not until 1999 when my Dad was showing me some of his old video game pamphlets. They were dated back around 1992 so they were quite old considering at that time the Nintendo 64 was the big thing in Australia. Anyway on the very last page of one of the pamphlets was Phantasy Star II for the Megadrive it stood out for two reasons this time. One: The name of the game yet again (I’ve seen that before). Two: The outstanding price tag it had with it $124.95. It was the most expensive item in the whole pamphlet. That’s how much that game cost back in 1992 in Australia brand new. My Dad then told me he remembered seeing the first Phantasy Star game around for the Sega Master System when he was buying games back in the late 80’s. But it wasn’t a game he would have enjoyed so I assume that’s why he never bought it.
Okay its now 2002 I’m well aware of the classic series but I still haven’t played a Phantasy Star game yet, but I’m about to get reminded of the series yet again. It was also around this time I started getting into anime and I picked up a video game magazine and in the mag they had a retro review section and guess what game was reviewed. Phantasy Star II it had full screenshots and everything and it was at this time I finally found out Phantasy Star was a Sci-Fi RPG. I had the Sci-Fi part right a long time ago. The final result for the game was a 9 out of 10. At the time the only RPGs I had ever played were Zelda games and they are more like adventure games than traditional RPGs, so I still had never really played an RPG let alone a Phantasy Star game. It really interested me from this point onward especially after seeing a screenshot of Nei, those ears and big red eyes. It was about here that I felt I needed to play this game. (I still own this magazine by the way)
Okay it’s still 2002 and one of my friends had a Sega Megadrive emulator on his computer and was playing Sonic. I was curious as to how he got the game onto his computer I immediately recognised it as a Megadrive game. He said that you can download the games. I didn’t know much about downloading stuff at that point and we only had a Windows 98 crappy computer back then too. Anyway I went home and figured it out and by the end of that day I had an emulator and the ROM version of Phantasy Star II to play. I quite liked it but it took a while for me to realise I needed to level my characters up to survive, but because it was on a computer I never really got stuck into it all that much. I still preferred playing games on the consoles. From then on though I did start to love the series. My next PS game I picked up about a year later was the original Phantasy Star game complete from a Games Exchange store for about $20.00 I then played it on my Dad’s old Master System. Then it was the year 2007 I picked up my Sega MegaDrive collection for my PS2 complete with PSII, III and IV the rest speaks for itself.