I remember being 8 years old — this was well before a complex system of tubes informed users of new info on games 50 times a minute, and where we walked uphill to and from the arcade — and virtually salivating with anticipation for the arrival of each and every issue of SEGA Visions. Actually, I received the magazine even before that, when it was just called the “Team SEGA Newsletter” (a publication too obscure to even have its own Wikipedia link) and only focused on the SEGA Master System. While it may seem odd nowadays to not receive in-depth previews & analysis of a game 2 years in advance of its release from a dozen different sources, the mini-articles published in the old SEGA magazines (particularly the newsletter, before game coverage was serious business) were often the only glimpse we got of titles for the system. The newsletter (and SEGA Visions) may have been primarily marketing tools, but they were always incredibly exciting to read, and before the internet, screenshots of any sort were precious Mana to receive.

I remember being something like entranced by the preview for the original Phantasy Star. Here’s a flashback for you:

How could you not love a game that had a picture of a floating eyeball and a cool chick with a flaming sword, and some kind of crazy cat creature with big fangs? Plus that evil-looking guy with the mask and the sword in the background? And a big strong guy heaving a skeleton over his head? These things are indisputably awesome. I think the original version of the OED had, next to the entry for “awesome”, a drawing of a burly guy in futuristic armor chucking a skeleton.

What I didn’t realize at the time — aside from the fact that I would be working as the GM for the MMO descendant of this title in another twenty years (!) — was that this would end up being, essentially, SEGA’s longest continually-running franchise (phranchise?), and a landmark in early Japan-style RPGs to come to consoles.

This game is something of an artifact, but it’s still fun in a lot of ways. Even just seeing the early mechanics at work and having such a huge area — a massive map spread across multiple planets — to explore is a blast, and the story is still a ton of fun.

This game is also hard. Difficult. Not easy. There’s a reason that Japanese game makers didn’t really think until Final Fantasy VII finally broke through big-time that US gamers could handle the pacing and scope of their “traditional” world-crawling RPGs, but these early games showed just what was possible with epic RPGs (and let’s not forget to heap lots of credit on the Western-made Ultima series). It’s not just the difficulty, it’s the heavy emphasis on grinding for character advancement and fighting through epic quests for every scrap of XP in order to advance your characters. “Old School” RPG means a lot of time invested in advancing your characters, inch by inch, through an epic world you were more or less free to explore, long before the “sandbox game” was popular.

Phantasy Star focuses on the simple pleasures of dungeon-crawling and leveling up until you felt ready to take on the next level of monsters. That being said, it can be rough getting started. You are plunged right into the story, as the main character Alis, who has witnessed her brother’s death at the hands of government troops. Your brother’s dying words send you in search of a warrior who may be able to help, but before you can even make it to that town you have to fight the monsters roaming the starting area and collect enough meseta (the in-game currency, which is the same currency used in Phantasy Star Universe today!) to upgrade your gear as you see fit.

Heading out of the starting town, you can journey a little bit to the East and see a beach. You may think the beach is a nice place to visit — hey, you’re level 1, relaxing by the ocean would be great, right? Wrong. Don’t go to the beach! If you do, something called a Fishman will come and murder you. Here, I tried this out so you don’t have to. This digital image was snapped quickly at my own desk here at SEGA, so please excuse the lousy photography–the Fishman was very menacing, and I rushed the shot:

Note that one of the available menu actions is “Talk”. You can try talking to the Fishman! Note that this will also result in murder (your murder, not the Fishman’s). Your best bet, if you encounter anything with higher Hit Points than you early on, is to select the Run option. When you’re still at low level, just stick to the area around the starting town and look for anything with low hit points to kill. It’s wisest to save your game and return to town after each kill, and go into the orange house that’s near the exit to the town, where you can be healed for free. Rinse & repeat until you’ve leveled and saved up some meseta to buy new gear. From there, you can proceed East to the town of  Scion, and continue the game’s story.

Hopefully that’s enough to get you started. This is a great game to play in bits and pieces (or if you’re feeling crazy, stay up all night for serious old schooler credit). There’s a real pleasure in having these characters (including the awesome Myau) over the long haul and investing in & clawing for their every new level. Also, a few staples of the Phantasy Star series make their apperance in the original game — including the Dark Force (called Dark Falz in Phantasy Star Universe), and the mysterious dark planet Rykros.

The Master System version of Phantasy Star is out now for the Wii Virtual Console!