Fan launches demo for his Phantasy Star Online Remaster project

If you had a Dreamcast growing up, you probably had a copy of Phantasy Star Online somewhere. Even you, the guy that bought it because it had an exclusive demo of Sonic Adventure 2 in the case. If you spent hundreds of hours playing the game online, then you will be happy to know that Youtube/Reddit user Glader has been working on a remake project for the original Phantasy Star Online game.

You can click here to check out the demo he has launched, above video talks about the project. It seems that the project is very early in development, right now its just a proof of concept showing off the core features. According to the video, it is being developed on Unity 5. Very interesting project, what do you guys think?

[Via Nichegamer]

Swingin’ Report Show #71: Phantasy Star Online with Susan Arendt & James Mielke

Dreamcast Month comes to an end at SEGAbits with a special episode of the Swingin’ Report Show podcast in which we celebrate one of the most memorable Dreamcast games – Phantasy Star Online.

Joining Barry and George on this episode are two gaming industry greats! Taking a telepipe to the Pioneer 2 is Susan Arendt – Managing Editor of Joystiq.com, former Editor-In-Chief at The Escapist, and former contributor to GameShark, Shojo Beat Magazine, and Wired. And back from busting a blue rappy it’s James Mielke – Founder of BitSummit, former Editor-In-Chief of Electronic Gaming Monthly and 1UP.com, and former producer at Q Entertainment and Q-Games.

Join us for a special round table looking back on PSO, from pre-release hype, to launch, and memories of the many versions and episodic sequels. As a bonus, James reveals that he has an army of super soldiers and he shares some inside info on where Phantasy Star Online 2 is at in English translation and what may be holding up a Western release.

[Download] [RSS] [iTunes] [Archive]

Phantasy Star Online 2 – August Update Trailer

Phantasy Star Online 2 will recieve three updates in August the first update arrives on the first of August, the second on the 8th and the final update sometime during the end of August.

The August 1st update will include the summer lobby (which feautures a rappy riding a surf board!), new enemies and new AC content. Plus some new summer themed clothes and hair styles.

Make sure to check out the trailer the new locations and boss look superb!

The Weekly Five: Bein’ bad – SEGA style

Admit it. When a game gives you the option to be bad, you go for it. Unlike the stupid real world, video games have no repercussions. While game designers may not intend for you to do these bad things, or there are in-game penalties, in the end it’s just a game so you can be bad to your heart’s content, hit the reset button and return to playing the game as it was intended. In this week’s Weekly Five, we celebrate Friday the 13th with five SEGA games which allow you to be (you guessed it) bad.

Tuesday Tunes: Phantasy Star Online’s “Whole New World”

Welcome to the return of Tuesday Tunes, everyone! Changing focus away from remixes and original music, we’ll be focusing more on SEGA’s own music. Boy does SEGA have some great stuff! We’ll be starting this feature back up with a song that inspired me to write up a few of these and restart the feature: PSO’s “Whole New World”, a song that recently saw a remix in the latest PSO2 video. Now, I love SEGA’s orchestrations, especially from the Dreamcast and early third party period. To me, this music represents some of the most beautiful original orchestrations ever done in gaming. One of the first SEGA songs to ever land on my mix CD was this beauty of a track. Very different from the cheesy rock I was used to hearing from the Sonic Adventure games.

This is one of those songs that I think would be really neat to hear in a real live orchestra. SEGA really needs to do something equivolent to the Zelda tour for their series. Come on SEGA, just have Crush 40 pop in at the end to play Live and Learn after the orchestra plays all your other masterpieces. People will go!

Years of the Dreamcast Part 2: Good Things Never Die



To Read Part 1, go here.

In July, reality finally caught up with me. Something had possessed me to join the SEGA forums. Because I hated being told that my name was already taken, and I figured the Knuckles name must already be taken given he’s such an awesome character, I decided to cut to the chase and just leave the K out of my name. Upon joining the forums, I discovered the Dreamcast had been canned and, being a teenager, I immediately latched on to the first online petition I saw. Those were the days. Keeping a thread ever present at the top of the forum whenever I got home from school or my friend’s house. Arguing with older, wiser, more realistic individuals like the naïve teenager I was, a large part of my Dreamcast experience came from defending it from bashers and supporting a petition that SEGA probably never even saw, let alone cared about.

Phantasy Star Online 2 Media Briefing – Fan Subbed!


[Part 1]

I’m sure any avid PSO fan remembers that not so long ago there was a media briefing in Japan for Phantasy Star Online 2, given by the games producer ‘Dragon Sakai’ (Satoshi Sakai). The problem with Japanese media briefings is that, well, they’re in Japanese, a made up language that nobody really understands, similar to talking in tongues.

Thankfully fans exist and so the fan dub was born and so at long last we can present the entire Media Briefing subbed in English. The briefing was translated by Jeremiah Bourque while Ian R. Justman and Velocity7 who did the audio editing, and subtitling, so give them all a round of applause!

Hit the jump for part 2 and part 3 of the briefing!