Waves

Back in the day, you couldn’t beat a bit of PSO on the Dreamcast. I remember begging my Mum to let me play it online, she agreed eventually but I had to pay the bill every month. I had many characters throughout my adventures with DC PSO, but the three pictured below are the three that I enjoyed most. You may notice they have very unimaginative names, this was because the name you chose for your character decided your Section ID, which in turn decided which items drop from the various monsters. I chose names that would enable me to obtain the weapons, armours and units that would best suit the characters I had created.

Although I did play the Gamecube and Xbox versions, it was always the Dreamcast version that will stick in my memory. When I started playing the GC and Xbox versions, the game was already established on those formats, I’d missed the start, was always playing catch-up. With the DC, I was there from very nearly the word go. I consider myself lucky I never got NOL’d (hackers would turn your character into a low level NPC, a totally unreversible predicament), but I did get PK’d (player killed) a few times. This also caused me to lose a fair few weapons, as when you died, you dropped your equipped weapon and all your Meseta. Not a problem when with friends, but strangers who came into your game, killed you and stole your precious Psycho Wand…

This brings me on to my experiences with “hacking”, or item creation – I only ever kept stuff that I’d lost (apart from the Red Ring you can see on my HUnewearl down there, that was just too cool to not use). Thing was, there was no sense of achievement in creating items. Weapons like my Spread Needle and Psycho Wand were legit – I found them after many, many, many hours of hunting – the fact the Spread Needle only had 15% on Native only made it more personal. I could have easily made a 50% Native weapon, but it would have been a hollow facsimile.

Also worth a mention are the loading screens. Logging in was like flying through several rings of light, and going down to the surface of Ragol was just how I’d imagine going down through a Telepipe would look. You could also alter the visual effects by moving the thumbstick around, quite a novel touch back in those days. A fond memory is going into a game and enquiring as to the whereabouts of your new team-mates by simply saying “pipe?”, meaning “which Telepipe do I take to catch up with you guys?”. Good stuff.

Here are some screens, click them for a more detailed look at my characters, just as they were before I wiped them from existence prior to selling on my Dreamcast.

Most of the guys I play PSU with have actually gone back to playing PSO on PC. Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst, as it’s called, is no longer supported by Sega and is now independently hosted for public use in various places over the internet. They are having a whale of a time, but I can’t go back – I know it’d ruin all the fond memories I have.

A lot of people say that Phantasy Star Universe didn’t quite match the old PSO atmosphere, but for me what made it so great was the interaction you were able to have with others. Not just the chatting, but the item swapping and healing people when they were nearly Booma food. PSU took all that to another level with item synthing, the shop system and (mostly thanks to the 360) voice chat. PSO had it’s own unique charm, but as an overall package I still prefer PSU.