Phantasy Star Memory

Cloud121

Established Member
Hey guys, this is a "little" something I sent into the PS Pages, about my tiny Phantasy Star Memory.

Hope you like it! :)

Ah yes. Phantasy Star. THE RPG series for Genesis. If only I had become such a Final Fantasy die-hard, I'd probably would've maybe owned one of these games by now. RPGs are my favorite genre of games, and it all started on that one faithful day...

Enter Final Fantasy & The PSX

I got my Sony PlayStation for Christmas in 1997. I got a few games along with it. One of them was Final Fantasy VII. I mentally thought "Big deal, FF sucks." I watched my step-brother play it, it looked KINDA cool. The next morning (12-26-97) at approximately 10:30 - 11:30 (somewhere along that timeframe) I thought to myself "Maybe I should try that game out." I put the first disc in, and after about five to ten minutes of play, I was addicted. The amount of customization was just amazing to me!

Luckily for me, Square decided to release a demo of FFVIII with copies of Brave Fencer Musashi. It helped my intense pain of waiting for FFVIII a lot better. I got it for Christmas 1998, and played it non-stop. I waited an excrutiating 1 year 9 month+ for FFVIII (Day of Dreamcast, September 9, 1999). I got it, played it to death. Took me a good sixty-eight hours (FFVII only takes me thirty) to complete FFIX (November 2000), again, was a great game. Took me forty-five hours to complete. Better than VIII but not as good as VII or IV.

I joined the staff at my favorite RPG site (rpgchannel.xrs.net, my name is Cloud121) RPG Channel. My good friend Pedro had written a review for PSIV. He gave it a 95% rating. Now that got me interested. I downloaded the ROM and played a bit of it. It was alright. I deleted about a week later, because I wasn't playing it.

Enter Saturn

I got my Sega Saturn in August of 2000. I played it for months and months on end. It had turned me from a Sony fanboy to a Sega fanboy (I take pride in that :)). Sega Saturn is just the best console there is. I loved playing my favorite arcade games at home. That was why I bought my Saturn in the first place. I wouldn't need to pump a ton of quarters into VF2 at my arcade, now that I had it at home. I loved having my N64 and Saturn. However..... one thing was missing. A good RPG. All my Square games were at my dad's along with my PSX. So I didn't have any good RPGs to play my mom's. I wanted an RPG so badly. I could only play my beloved Square games at two week intervals.

Enter Dreamcast

Now with DC (January 2002) I can play RPGs on the emulators that're released for it. Due to my Sega fandom, I talked to Pedro about good Genesis RPGs. He said Phantasy Star IV and Shining Force II were his favorites. I played PSIV yet again, and I started to grow on it. I liked it enough to download the PSII and PSIII ROMs. PSII was awesome! It took me awhile to get used to PSIII, and how the battle music will just switch at any given moment. I fell in love with the PS games, and decided to screw the ROMs, and go straight for the carts. That would be no easy feat. I found only one place that had a PS game, and that was PSIII for $30.00. I didn't buy it. I don't know why I didn't. However, one of my fellow SegaXtremers (http://www.litespeedcomputers.com/sx) was selling ALL his Sega stuff. He said he had a MINT PSIV. And he would sell it to me for $25! I jumped at the chance. I just had to get Final Fantasy X first! ;)

Currently, I am trying to get my hands on a copy of PSII along with PSIV, while fighting off the urge to skip PSII and just get some more Saturn games, along with PSIV. I'm REALLY looking forward to getting PSIV in a month, along with PSII hopefully soon after. I play PSII, III, and IV every now and then a little bit. I make sure not to go too far, or else, I'll REALLY have to work to reach that point in the carts. I regularly visit The Phantasy Star Pages, to read about the Genesis PS games. I just hope the stories are as good as they say they are!

(Edited by Cloud121 at 8:58 pm on Mar. 17, 2002)
 
Cool. I too love RPGs, and somehow I never got the any of the Phantasy Star games. When I finally get some more money, I'll definately consider picking them up because I hear they were fabulous.
 
Totally agree! Right now is the best time to buy Playstation games, while the stores are clearing their stock (and before games start becoming rare).

I just bought Star Ocean 2 for 7 bucks, and got the Resident Evils [again :p] for <$20. Funcoland, at least the one in my area, has great prices for used PSX titles, most of them are under 10

N64 as well... I just bought a couple Pokemon (Pokemon Snap, Hey You! Pikachu) games for my nephews, they were about $35 US brand new @ Meijer.
 
funcoland has sucked ever since it merged with gamestop (and babbages, software etc and the others).

The prices used to be soooo much better... I remember walking in with 20 bucks and walking out with a bag full of assorted NES, Genny and SNES carts.

now if you go and look close, you'll notice alot of the used prices are the same as the brand new prices (esp for xbox, ps2 gamecube 'newer' stuff). Some are even more! (I saw a used copy of GTA3 for 5 bucks more than the new one.. saddest thing is I also saw some kid buy it)

And of course anything with a recognizable character (sonic, mario, pokemon, mega man, etc) adds 500% to the price, regardless of how 'rare' the title is.. (30 bucks for MegaMan 3 NES? puh-lease)

best prices for used games I find are at a couple of indy shops in the area. One shop I know of still has a stack of unopened Saturns for 40 bucks a piece.. I got Panzer Dragoon 1 & 2 there for 5 bucks apiece..

eBay can be good too.. Shop around, try and avoid the big chains..

as an aside, blockbuster is a decent place to find used 'new' titles if you can handle the disc-shield crap they use on the discs. 15 bucks for Metal Gear Solid 2 or GTA3 ain't too shabby.. Lots of PSX/DC/N64 stuff there for next to nothing too. Got Smash Brothers (n64) about 2 weeks after it came out at blockbuster for 10 bucks (though it had to have been priced wrong)
 
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