Phantasy Star leads me to an underrated Game console

[7th lutz]

Sometimes, people buy a system only because they want the system just for videogame. They find out there more great games for the system and they enjoy more games then they expect to. That is what happened to me when I was buying a Sega Master System for Phantasy Star.

The first Time I heard of the Sega Master System was on a couple commercials was in 1986 or 1987. I first saw it person was in January of 1988 when I looking at game console with my dad for purchasing a video game system at Toys “R” us. I ended up deciding to buy an Atari 2600 Jr. at the time.

I remembered seeing Sega Master System games at video rental place back in the late 80’s and in the early 90’s. I remembered seeing Phantasy Star as when the games that you could rent. Phantasy Star at the time didn’t mean anything thing to me. There were not many Sms games I heard of at the time. The only Sega Master System games I heard were Rampage, Double Dragon, and Afterburner.

By the end of 1997, I wanted a Sega Master system. What Happened was got a Sega Genesis in Christmas of 1992 and I discovered rpgs. I enjoyed playing Phantasy star 2,3, and 4 and I was after getting the original Phantasy Star for the Sega Master system as a result of me liking the Phantasy Stars I played. I knew that Phantasy Star a great game due to it being in one of the greatest games all time list in a game magazine in 1996. Thankfully for me I was starting to go to a technical college in 1997 and I discovered a music store that had videogames. I found Phantasy Star and a Sega Master System in that store and a lot Sms games that didn’t heard about like Wonder Boy 3: Dragon’s Trap, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Golevellious: Valley of Doom, Power Strike, and Psycho Fox to name a few games I saw there.

When I played the game, I thought to myself, I needed to get more games for the system due to the fact some of the games I didn’t heard of might be “hidden gems”. Phantasy Star was not a disappointment to me. It was different then the rest of the Phantasy Stars I played previously with the caves and dungeons being in a 3d prospective. When I played in the 3d caves and dungeons parts of the game, it reminded of the 2 Ultima games I played on the Nes, but were better then the Ultima games that I played. The game play was great and I felt it was better then the other 8 bit rpgs I had at the time like Dragon Warrior, Dragon Warrior 2, Final Fantasy, Ultima: Exodus, Ultima: Quest of the Avatar, and Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.

I did some researching on the Sega Master System games I found at the store, and I found out they were good to great games. I purchased as many Sega Master System games as I could before they moved a block with prices of the games being cheaper then they were. I enjoyed the games I bought. At the 2002 Midwest Gaming Classic, I bought Sonic for the Sms. I played the game and while it was different then the Genesis version, I liked the Sms version a lot. I decided to get import Sms games and the ones I bought, played great and I enjoyed very much like Xenon 2: Megablast.

I considered myself lucky that I was after the Sega Master System due to Phantasy Star. I would’ve missed out an underrated game console otherwise.

[NE146]

The game play was great and I felt it was better then the other 8 bit rpgs I had at the time like Dragon Warrior, Dragon Warrior 2, Final Fantasy, Ultima: Exodus, Ultima: Quest of the Avatar, and Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.

It was.. and the thing is, none of those games were really around (at least in the U.S. Market) when Phantasy Star came out, so PS was really one the first for us, and it turned out to be the best.

Phantasy Star 1 was my first console RPG and pretty much shaped my perception of what I wanted them to be. So it's kind of funny that with all the RPG's that followed it like Dragons Warrior on the NES, I found them sorely lacking and a dissapointing step down after coming from the awesomeness of Phantasy Star.. although it didn't stop me from playing them through The first RPG that did the trick and I felt was a worthy followup was Final Fantasy 1 on the NES

Oh.. if you haven't played Y's, that's a good SMS game. Although now of course you could play the TG16 CD version (which also wasn't around when I first played SMS Y's through)

[diskoboy]

I always thought that PS was far superior to any 8-bit Zelda.

To me, Zelda was more of an action game than an RPG. Growing up on computer RPG's like Akalabeth and Ultima 1 and 2, I missed the dungeon crawling, which PS finally brought back to the console RPG table.

[dcescott]

I never owned it, but a friend did. Hours and hours he played it.

[ASSEMblerEX]

SMS was a great system.