Resurrection: Phantasy Star
Phantastic…
Resurrection: Phantasy Star
Resurrection is Resolution’s weekly retrospective feature. This time, Lee Bradley tells us the tale of PHANTASY STAR and how important it was to him as a wee sprog.
THERE’S A reason why nostalgia and videogames are so inextricably linked. For those of us of a certain age, playing video games is in part an attempt to reconnect with our youths. As we grow older, we search to replicate the endorphin rush of discovery brought about by our formative game experiences. But they can never be recreated.
Our brains are now too developed, we’re too cynical, too analytical. We know too much. Where once games were things of mysterious beauty arriving from exotic lands, they are now the product of mere mortals in California and, er, Guildford. We know how they were made and what market they are aimed at. We know the individuals that create them and the sordid legal squabbles that surround them. We know everything about them, before they even reach our homes. Child-like wonderment and veneration are not made of these things.
So we remember those days when it was different. When a new game wasn’t gained as the result of endeavor and played at the expense of responsibility. For us as children, a new game was acquired through the sheer weight of our desire, a desire fed by a glimpse of beautiful box art on a shop shelf, an appealing title or a fuzzy screenshot in a cherished magazine.
This is why we love the games of our youth. This is why I love Phantasy Star.
Fantasy Start
The first time I saw Phantasy Star, it wasn’t even a cartridge. It was just a circuit board, a collection of transistors on green plastic. My friend’s
father was an exec at Sega Europe, so carrier-bags of games would intermittently arrive in this naked state. Before pushing it into his Master System and flicking that switch, I didn’t even know what game it was. When the gorgeous title screen appeared featuring a sword-wielding Alis Lansdale, I was still none the wiser.
I understand now that Alis was one of the first female videogame leads, a pioneer. But it didn’t even register then, something else had caught my attention. Because there beneath the ubiquitous ’start game’ was something I had never seen on a console title before: ‘Continue.’
Phantasy Star was the first console title to offer a save game, something it achieved though a small in-built battery cell. It was more than a mere technological gimmick, it was a neccesity. This was a experience of such magnitude and scope that it could not be conquered in one sitting. It’s breath and depth could spill out into days and weeks of playtime. Not because it was ridiculously hard (though it is tough) or because it had 5000 levels, but because it contained entire worlds. And what’s more, those worlds were filled with cities and seas, countryside and people. People driven by politics and money and desire and revenge. Real people, in a universe entirely of their own.
Phantasy Star was the first JRPG to reach the West, weeks before Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest stormed our shores. A roleplaying game. Though I didn’t know what that meant at the time.
The JRPG tropes that cling to life in this new millenium were jaw-dropping innovations in 1988. The virtual cities teemed with inhabitants ready to converse with you at the click of a button. Shops overflowed with items to purchase. Beyond the city walls roamed lethal, fantastical creatures ready to ambush you from nowhere, without warning. Labyrynthine dungeons – rendered in beautifully smooth first-person 3D - twisted and turned, a treasure chest or a gruesome enemy around every corner.
Continues…
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