Phantasy Star generation:1: Dezoris

Almost everything in Phantasy Star generation:1 has been redesigned. Even the icy planet, Dezoris, has a new look, as seen in this view when traveling to the world. In this case, the planet actually looks better than the original. The patterns of blue and white on the surface more accurately reflect the explorable portions of the world. Unfortunately it seems to be somewhat less spherical than one might expect.



You may view the gallery page for Dezoris.

It doesn't look spherical because it's the wrong aspect ratio.

You'll have to force it to 4:3 and it'll look correct:



You'll actually need to do this with any screen captures from generation:1 or generation:2.

Well, you are correct about me having the wrong aspect ratio, but 4:3 might not be right either. Back when I first took this screen shot (it's a couple of years old now), the emulator I was using for the captures didn't even support changing the aspect ratio. It saved all the screen shots as 1024x1024 squares. So I was guessing a bit at the actual correct sizes and got it slightly wrong. I need to recapture some of those old Generations screens in a better resolution to fix that.

As for 4:3, in the time since I wrote that description, I've learned that the game's native resolution is apparently a widescreen ratio. A recent screen shot that a newer version of the emulator claims to be the native resolution is something like 10:7. It's freaky.

Thoul wrote:

As for 4:3, in the time since I wrote that description, I've learned that the game's native resolution is apparently a widescreen ratio. A recent screen shot that a newer version of the emulator claims to be the native resolution is something like 10:7. It's freaky.

Really? Interesting. I'm just curious to know how it arrives at that conclusion. Might be because of the underscan the PS2 always has, but I know when I tell my receiver to maintain OAR, I get a 4:3 image.

Mind if I ask what emulator? I'd like to play with it too.

Hm, a quick look around on Google suggests it probably is underscan. I wasn't aware of that before, but it makes sense. If I add about 32 pixels to the height of the newer screens, that would make a 4:3 ratio.

The emulator is at http://pcsx2.net/. It's actually a bit of a pain to get it working at first and it needs a computer with good specs, but it runs Generation 1 fairly decently once you get it going. The old version I was using was pretty buggy graphically outside of cutscenes, though playable. Generation 2 seemed playable as well, though I didn't go very far into the game. Complete Collection didn't run past the title screen at all, though.

This was two or three versions ago though, so maybe the latest version does better. I haven't gotten around to really testing the games in it yet.