Phantasy Star (Japanese)
In 1987 SEGA released The original Phantasy Star for the SEGA Mark III in Japan, and later for the SEGA Master System. On this page I will focus on the added features of the Japanese release of Phantasy Star. If you really need PS1 hints, you’ll find everything you need at www.phantasy-star.net .
Phantasy Star chronicles the quest of Alis, who battles to defeat the evil wizard Lassic to free the Algol star system and avenge her brother Nero's death. As allies she has a talking yellow cat (Myau), the fighter Tyrone (Odin), and the wizard Lutz (Noah). They travel through the three worlds of the Algol system: Palma, Motavia, and Dezolis. And the game doesn't end after defeating Lassic…
First, I’ll clear up the confusion between the ‘space century’ and ‘AW’ calendars. The Japanese versions have always used the AW calendar and Phantasy Star 1 took place in AW 342, as shown here. SEGA of America just used ‘space century’ in PS1 and then started using ‘AW’ from PS2 on. This is one of the many reasons why people gripe about SEGA of America’s translations.
The only big difference between the American and Japanese Releases of Phantasy Star (besides being in two different languages) is that the Japanese version supported the FM sound chip that wasn’t in (or was never activated) in the SEGA Master System. The Japanese SEGA Mark III had this FM sound capability. As a result, the Japanese Phantasy Star has much better sound than the American version. If you have your speakers on, you should be hearing some of this FM quality sound right now! The only 8-bit SEGA emulators I know that support the FM chip option are Massage and MEKA. They can be found just about anywhere on the web.
Phantasy Star was the best role-playing game for the 8-bit SEGA platforms. It featured unique (at the time) first-person perspective dungeons, the first (and only one I can remember) female main character, multiple worlds with different terrains (the watery earth-like Palma, the desert planet Motavia, and Dezolis the winter wonderland), long hours of non-linear game play and pretty nice character pics too! Not to mention the graphics were remarkable for an 8-bit game. Phantasy Star has been so popular, it has been released in three formats! First is the original 8-bit Master System/Mark III cartridge. Then there was a special limited edition Mega Drive (Genesis) version released only in Japan. There was no sound or graphics improvement though. Finally the Phantasy Star Collection CD for the SEGA Saturn (Japanese only) contained Phantasy Star, along with PS2, PS3, PS4 and the two Game-Gear games. The Collection CD also contains TV commercials for PS 1 through 4. Some of the pictures you see here were taken from the PS1 commercial.
Other than that the two releases of Phantasy Star (English and Japanese) are pretty much the same game. If you want to know more about Phantasy Star or it’s sequels, the web is full of pages with much more detail than this one.