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Everyone remembers 1988, right? Though Final Fantasy was released in 1987 for Japan, it wouldn't see a localization for three years. The same fate of being much later across the Pacific befell Dragon Warrior, which also came out three years after its Japanese release - 1989. The nascent JRPG genre's only major offering before its two behemoths made it across the ocean was on a console completely crushed by the NES: the Sega Master System. The fact that not many people outside of Brazil owned the Master System meant, for many years, that the original Phantasy Star was a rather obscure find. Its $100 price tag limited its exposure, also. The greater success of the Sega Genesis translated into a larger audience having experience with the three sequels to Phantasy Star, but they were (and are) still much less recognized than RPG series on Nintendo systems.
The original four Phantasy Star games differ markedly from the Phantasy Star Online series that began in 1999 and is far more recognized by modern RPG fans. The original titles were (at the time) unique in their almost complete absence of any fantasy elements, replacing them with science fiction. The settings and stories of the Phantasy Star quartet have held up quite well over the years since they were released, though Sega's translations of them are hardly the stuff of legend. The games have seen some reissues on compilations over the years, but a full-fledged remake project just might go over very well nowadays.
Sega did try this for Phantasy Star and Phantasy Star II as part of the Sega Ages project. These two games, unlike most of the titles chosen for budget remakes, did not turn into ugly 3D and by all accounts preserved the spirit of the originals quite well. Unfortunately for any RPGamers who desired to play these games outside Japan, the poor sales of the only attempt by Sega to bring the Sega Ages series elsewhere doomed hopes that Phantasy Star redux might be officially translated.
The factors that made the Phantasy Star series unique years ago have been somewhat tempered, but not enough to make them generic at all. Phantasy Star had a female RPG protagonist years before developers started caring whether women played the genre. Phantasy Star II's story is quite intricate and interesting, at least for 1989. Phantasy Star III was developed by a different studio and is regarded as the black sheep of the series, but still has an interesting method of choosing who the protagonist for each generation will marry to mix up the story and characters. And Phantasy Star IV stood strong as quite possibly the best traditional RPG on the Sega Genesis, playing well even today as an example of 16-bit gaming's top titles.
Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy long ago jumped onto the perpetual remake bandwagon, and Phantasy Star could easily do the same. The first two games are notorious for their brutal difficulty, especially the second, and remakes could incorporate a difficulty select for minimizing frustration. Many facets of the design, especially the first three, obviously date back to an era when RPGs were constantly obtuse, and could use a bit of modernization. Localization would almost certainly bring better translations than the at-best mediocre ones Sega provided for the original releases. The core of the original Phantasy Star games remains just as interesting and appealing as it did back before the PlayStation was released, and deserves a chance to be experienced by a new audience.
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