If you follow my writups you probably already know that I just recently wrote an article about how remakes are not necessarily a good idea these days. I feel that this is true for almost every game that has been remade with the one exception that comes to mind being the Resident Evil games that were remade. This is largely because not only did they update the graphics and controls for those games but they also would change the story a great deal as well. It wasn't a remake, it was like a completely different game.
Before I get too off the point I want to talk about a game that greatly shaped my childhood on the Sega Genesis called Phatasy Star 2.
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Keeping in mind that the game I spoke about yesterday, Dragon Quest 3, was made just ONE YEAR before this one was released, perhaps you can understand why we got so excited about this release. The graphics and sound were so much better on the Sega Genesis than they were on the NES because the Genesis was a much more powerful machine than the NES was. Today the graphics just seem silly but in 1989? This was a mind-blowing masterpiece.
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They did a fun little trick in the combat instances where they saved a bunch of graphical time by not even attempting to recreate the environment that they people were previously standing in before they were attacked. It didn't matter if you were in the middle of a field, inside a factory, or at a volcano, the fight always took place in this rather futuristic (at the time) playfield.
Things have progressed a lot since then of course but at the time this was just fine with all of us that were playing it.
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The game was pretty RPG typical in that it involved running around safe towns gathering information and equipment and then leaving said city towards areas that were not safe and involved a bunch of combat scenarios. This was something that actually became a bit annoying because you never saw any enemies on the screen. Encounters were determined by RNG so after each battle you never knew if it was going to be 2 steps or 200 before you had another battle on your hands. I would later read that it was determined by each new step that you took a "roll" would be done and if it was within a certain parameter say, a 15 or 16 on a 20 sided die, you would have another battle. Encounters in certain areas could be made more likely by increasing the amount of numbers... if that makes sense.
It was frustrating at times but we didn't know any different because up to this point, every single RPG was like this.
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The thing that made Phantasy Star 2 so incredible wasn't just the improved graphics and sound although that definitely was a big part of it. The thing that truly made this game was that it had an incredible and reasonably-easy-to-follow story. When one of the main protagonists perma-dies toward 1/3 of the way through the game point, it actually really hits you.
When I think about the games that I enjoyed the most in my life Phantasy Star 2 is definitely in the top-10 but yet, at the same time, I would never go back and replay it.
Here we are nearly 40 years later and I can still hear some of the songs that take place in the game inside my head. These were songs that you heard over and over again such as the battle music and the tune that plays after you win a battle and are sorting out the loot. At the time, this was probably great because the music was so different and better than other games I had played but I know that the real reason why it is stuck in my head is because I was subjected to its repetitive nature thousands of times.
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By the daming standards of today, the overall map wasn't even very big. It also wasn't at all open world. areas that were more difficult were locked off by several bridges that couldn't be crossed until you had certain keys that had to be obtained from various dungeons located throughout the kingdom or land or whatever.
I never really understood what happened to this franchise because it certainly was popular both in Japan and USA. It is likely because it was developed directly by SEGA and basically everything with that company fell apart in the early 2000's.
The last Phantasy Star game I ever played took place on the Sega Dreamcast, which was a system that honestly, was a lot better than its sales numbers would indicate.
Even if someone out there took the time to remake this game I likely would simply just leave it alone unless they completely overhauled the way the game is played. It was epic at the time but would be dreadfully boring by today's standards.
On one particular list, this game is regarded as the 29th greatest game of all time and even Nintendo Power recognized it as one of the greatest RPG's of all time.
If you were alive in 1989 though, there is still a relatively good chance that you never played this game. There was no internet, and while the Genesis was popular, it was in its infancy at the time of the game's release and later on Sonic and other such action games started to be the primary focus of the console. For me, it holds a special place in my memory and that is precisely where I intend to keep it. I would hate to ruin the memories by trying to relive them at my advanced age.