Well lets see, I'll try to do this without sounding too old.
My first encounter with Phantasy Star was many moons ago some time around 1990 not long after I bought my brand spanking new Sega Master System with my paper round money from a catalogue that my mother used frequently. Now at this point I had been raised on the all powerful ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC 464, this meant if you wanted to play good games you either spent your weeks pocket money on a cassette tape that may or may not work or you spent hours typing in the code yourself. The only console previous to this had been my Dads Atari 2600!
Well here I was with this big black brick, no keyboard no joystick no cartridges all I had to play was Alex Kid built into the system. (and the snail game you had to do weird button presses while resetting). On with the tale, while out shopping for some new shoes for school I stumbled on a rack of console games that the shop keeper had just set up mostly for NES and many tape cassettes for various other systems I was used to seeing but there was one cartridge that stood out from the others one that would work on my SMS. On the cover was an image of a blonde wielding a sword fighting an eyeball with wings and a very heavy price tag of £90GBP I had to beg and crawl to get my Mum to lend me the money promising to pay back every penny! That night I was glued to my little black and white portable TV with snowy picture hacking away. I am embarrassed to say I didn't actually complete the game for almost a year.
Well the years went by and the Megadrive was released, and was added to my collection of stuff I was impressed with the graphics and speed but all the shops in my area only stocked action games. A small video rental shop one day started to rent console games and I would spend my meager money trying all sorts out on the Megadrive nothing satisfying my needs and at this time I had started pen and paper gaming. Until one day while browsing the shelves a new game had appeared Phantasy Star III I rented it and was addicted, week after week I would renew the rental playing through every possible generation drawing out the maps on graph paper occasionally using them in my pen and paper games. No one else ever requested the game and the shop keeper one day turned to me and said "Keep it"

A long time went by before Phantasy Star IV came into my sights in a bargain bin at the same video rental place £20GBP used, it was mine and I was at it again the cut scenes had me hooked and the story was being read word for word. Well eventually I finally laid my hands on a copy of Phantasy Star II and the collection was complete and I still haven't gotten around to completing II strange but something in my adult life always seems to crop up when I start playing it (Starting to think it's jinxed)
Well there it is I don't mention PSO as I have always felt that is when the game lost its Phantasy Starness tried playing it and just could never get into it Oh Well.