by defyantx07 » Thu Dec 31, '15, 2:31 pm
My first exposure to Phantasy Star was III during the early Genesis Era, I was around 6 or 7. I owned a Sega Master System and an NES but my older cousin owned a Genesis. I would come over and watch him play Phantasy Star III everyday and was completely enthralled with it. Here was a game I'd never seen anything like before. It had a menu system where you could see the characters, there stats, inventory and it seemed to have this very epic story with lots of dialogue and character interaction. All games I'd played before were simple side scrolling platformers, fun yes but nothing that resembled this kind of storytelling. Eventually my cousin moved on to other things and I inherited his Genesis and all his games. I started playing Phantasy Star all the time. Since I was still young I had a hard time grasping the story and reading the dialogue but the more I played the more I started to understand. I must have played through practically every ending. Then I saw promotional material for Phantasy Star IV and I damn near lost my mind. They were taking pre-orders for it at my local Babbages, my dad paid for the pre-order and when I brought that bad boy home I must have played nothing else cause I just sank weeks and months of my life into that game. Ever since the series has been my number 1. I went back and played the first two, got stuck a number of times in different parts of those two games. I only recently beat both the 1st and 2nd. I can't imagine a better series to grow up with. Though because of Nintendo's dominance I rarely find anyone else who grew up playing the series and not many people I know that are gamers gave it the time of day. I really hope that one day soon Sega wakes up and realizes they have a juggernaut of IP's just waiting to be revisited. I plan on spaming Sony to nudge Sega into releasing them on the PSN. Especially since Phantasy Star Gen 1 and 2 are both PS2 games.