Online titles are a tricky one for me and this blog. Trying to play versions as close to the original release as possible is one thing, but to try and play online titles in a world where twenty years has since past, the servers are long gone and only the most dedicated of players have set up some kind of alternative to keep their memories alive is another thing entirely.
I read that Phantasy Star Online is still, depending on where and how hard you look, online. That should be what I aim for, but I want instead to fire up that Dreamcast original, which has an offline mode, because its the Dreamcast that this game was built for.
Online games existed. MMORPGs existed. But they didn't exist in a manner that console players could get to grips with on an actual console, and this is where action RPG Phantasy Star Online comes in.
Will I miss the networked nature of this tale?
Frustrations
One of the first screens you'll get to in Phantasy Star Online is one that asks for serial numbers and access keys. Even if you have no intention of going online - which would be some kind of miracle, seeing as I'm emulating this - you need to have working numbers and keys to even get into the game. Luckily, the Internet just has these available for you to use. I don't know who they originally belonged to, but thank you.
We are in need of a new planet, and the Pioneer 1 is launched to find a hospital host. Settling on the planet Ragol, it sends word back to us that it's a lovely place to live and that the rest of the refugees should come along and visit sometime, and seven years later we do just that.
But in the process of communicating with each other, a giant explosion rocks the planet, seemingly destroying Pioneer 1 and causing a whole heap of problems for us in Pioneer 2. We can't fly back for seven years to a dying a planet. We've no choice but to be here, right now, and make something of it.
There are nine character types that you can be in Phantasy Star Online, and none of them really looked appealing to me, so I went with the HUmar and got customising. If our only chance of survival has just gone up in smoke, I feel justified in wearing black and looking moody, though the giant afro and shades look did give me pause for thought.
PINKAL? Great. Really fits my persona. Thanks, game...
It is at this point that we're finally given the option of going offline, which suits me nicely. I know the whole reason for its being is to be online and to tackle things as a group, but if the underlying game isn't my cup of tea, no amount of online interactivity is going to change that. Besides, this is emulation, there's not even going to be anything behind that online mode option, is there?
Is there?
I didn't check.
Fun Times
We load straight into a chat with an unnamed official, in a swanky looking cyber office, I must admit. The text boxes are simple, stylish and subtly animated. The presentation on display here is great. The plot put into these lines of text is a bit generic, but we've got to start somewhere.
Heading out of this place and through a teleporter, we find ourselves in a nice safe hub full of useful things like chit-chat, shops, medical centres and the like.
Our mission lies beyond giant hangar doors that probably do look obvious with hindsight, had I ran closer to them earlier, but in the moment they just looked like a wall and I obviously didn't care about chatting to the guys standing nearby. Yes, I got a bit lost in the small hub world. Let's move on.
So here we are, Phantasy Star Online, Forest 1. There are some small graphical errors thanks to emulation, but nothing game changing. We've got a minimap, we've got a HUD, we've got button prompts which mostly make sense - attacks, talk, something. We're all set to go.
Some boxes serve as our first target. Armed with a Not-a-lightsaber we make short work of them, as they drop something or other that I hoover up without paying attention to. You've got a light attack and a slower heavier attack, and already it feels suitably actiony for an action RPG.
This fancy computer does something, I'm sure. In the online mode it probably makes more sense. Offline, I just hit Enter and it closes and seems happy. Good for you, computer. I'm off to smash another box now.
This one contained a handgun, but I wasn't good enough to equip it right now. An important lesson has been taught, though - the world continues to move while you faff about inside the menus. If that's the case, you probably should find yourself somewhere safe to do anything more involved than swinging a sword or flapping your lips in someone's direction.
Through a door, we encounter our first threat, the rather threatening looking Booma, armed with ridiculous claws and menacing stares. I didn't have any problems locking onto these targets, for such a thing seems automatic. As you'd expect, a light attack does less than a heavy one, but the wind up for the heavy attack leaves you open and vulnerable.
When I say vulnerable, I mean that a single hit from these guys wipes out a quarter of your health, and after being ganged up on, I was rewarded with my first trip to the sick bay.
Further Frustrations
I thought I'd get a little further than that before anything happened. The controls aren't absolutely perfect, but they're more than manageable. I've played enough games to know how to move and fight. Clearly, I need to time my attacks better, learn how to block, and maybe not take on two monstrous Boomas at once. Easy.
I very nearly forgot about the menus within seconds. I had to retrieve my sword from my corpse and reequip it before fighting, but once that was done there was only one Booma left...
... who still managed to hit me. Of course.
The next area contained some bird-like things, and seeing as my targeting thingymajig is attracted to them as well, I raised my sword once more, no questions asked.
Oh, come on now...
Final Word
After an initial run like that, I've got no incentive to see where Phantasy Star Online takes me. While the presentation is simple and easy on the eyes, the backstory is a bit basic and falls flat. The entire fate of our species is at hand, isn't it? Can't we open with something a little bit more urgent than wandering around a ship and then through the corridors of a forest?
I'm being rather harsh on the first console title to do 'online' some real justice, and clearly, I've got no idea of how well the actual online aspects worked, but after this, I just don't want to know.
Its write up for the 1001 list mentions how gameplay crossed the language barriers and high-level players would just drop cool items at the feet of new players... and then it mentions it was swarmed with cheaters. It happens, you deal with it. I am in no doubt that back in the early 2000s, Phantasy Star Online was great for those who dove in and did it all.
But this is 2019, and I'm not in the mood to hunt down private servers or different versions of the game in an attempt to see what the online side of things might be like. I'm not even in the mood to watch a video. Actually, I take that back. There's a video from just a few weeks ago of an online Dreamcast session. I'll watch that, but I don't think it'll change my views.
You had to be there, surely, and when you were there, you had to be connected and had to want to see it through as the developers intended. There are some online games where I know exactly what devoting tens if not hundreds of hours to feels like, but MMORPGs just don't do it for me. They didn't then, and they don't now.
Can I recommend Phantasy Star Online? No, because I'm entirely the wrong person to ask. My type of game is right around the corner...
Fun Facts
It shouldn't be understated how huge a task it was to develop an online game for an audience whose focus was almost exclusively on consoles, in a country where pay-per-minute dial-up internet was the norm. To then take this game worldwide required partnering up with Swatch to use its Beat time to sync the servers, allowing players from either side of the world to meet up at the right time and place for a co-operative game, and a few thousand words in a multi-language chat system to be able to translate what everyone is typing. And here I am, dunking on it for dying to a chicken...
Phantasy Star Online, developed by Sonic Team, first released in 2000.
Version played: Sega Dreamcast, 2001, via emulation.
Version watched: Phantasy Star Online: Ver 2, Sega Dreamcast, 2001 (DreamcasticChannel)