Sega Ages 2500 Phantasy Star: Generation 1 FAQ

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There’s no such thing as too much love for Phantasy Star. For this FAQ, I’ll list all the resources I used to finish Phantasy Star: Generation 1, the Sega Ages 2500 remake of Phantasy Star, as well as some hints that the existing guides and FAQs have missed.

First up, your essential resources:

  • Omar PΓ©rez’s Mini-FAQ (GameFAQs): This is your base for the game, as it contains the information to get most of the core items, the sequence to play through the game and all sorts of other goodies. The content up until you go to Dezoris can be a bit light at times (more on filling those gaps is noted below), but once you jet off to the ice planet, it is 110% rock solid. I would not have been able to finish this game without his guide, especially with his constant plugs to use the Collaboration system πŸ™‚
  • Bokokun’s Lists FAQ (GameFAQs): It’s in shift-JIS, so make sure you have Japanese fonts installed. I can read hiragana, katakana and a bit of kanji, so Bokokun’s guide was a godsend in filling in the gaps when my brain wouldn’t articulate everything correctly πŸ™‚ Especially noteworthy is his guide to the Collaboration system, which saved my bacon on the final boss fights.
  • Wolfgang Landgraf’s Phantasy Star: Generation 1 guide. I used his Phantasy Star: Generation 2 guide extensively when I played through that a few years back, and once again he comes to the rescue with detailed maps on every dungeon in the game, translations of items in the store, general hints and full overland maps – his maps of Dezoris were amazingly helpful as I kept getting lost πŸ˜‰
  • Dark Vortex’s (Quan Jin’s) Phantasy Star FAQ (Sega Master System; GameFAQs). For the areas where Omar’s guide skimmed over pretty quickly, all the necessary info was neatly tucked away in Dark Vortex’s FAQ for the original Phantasy Star on the Master System. To be honest, any of the FAQs for PS1 would suffice, I just happened to prefer Dark Vortex’s.

The other thing I did to make life easier was to hack my levels to save on grinding – in the first instance, I bumped Alis to level 60-ish; later on when I amassed the rest of the party, I was pleased to see they all leveled up with Alis even when they weren’t in your party. Later into the game, I noticed in a few battles things were getting a little dicey, so I hacked my characters again to level 95 (or 9,000,000 EXP!) to finish off the game. You’re welcome to grind to your heart’s content, but I’m time poor and as much as I adore the early Phantasy Star games, PS1 and PS2 are too grind-heavy these days. I’ve already done the hard yards back in the day, so I was lazy with the remakes πŸ˜› I’ll be posting an updated guide on hacking the experience levels of the other characters in the future, and will look at uploading a guide to GameFAQs as well at some stage.

So, using all those documents above, you’ll be relatively set. I’d use Omar’s guide as the base, use Bokokun’s guide to help with identifying items and spells, Wolfgang’s guide for dungeon maps and fill in the gaps with Dark Vortex’s FAQ. There are still a few tricks that may step you up, so apart from the obvious (talk to everyone two or three times to exhaust the conversation chains, consult often, keep track of locations being mentioned in green [a working knowledge or katakana and hiragana helps, otherwise use Bokokun’s guide], etc), here are some situation specific details I noted during my playthrough:

Naula Key (Naura no kagi)

Talk to the man at Eppi (village leader), get Hashim’s Key (Hashim no kagi), talk to the village leader again, consult (L1), goto Parolit, talk to Mary (Meari-), and you should get the Naula Key (Naura no kagi) to enter Naula Cave.

Toriada Key (Toriada no kagi)

The Toriada Key (Toriada no kagi) is in the brown house in Gothic. Use it to enter Toriada Prison.

Bortevo Key (Bartevo no kagi)

To obtain the Bortevo Key (Bartevo no kagi), in Bortevo go to the top-right house, talk to Garingu and you should get the Bortevo Key (Bartevo no kagi). Consult a few times prior to getting it as I remember Myau mentions Garingu.

Hapsby

After obtaining the polymetal, you’ll find Haspy by searching the bottom-right house in Bortevo.

Casba Dragon

This one drove me nuts, so here’s how I got the dragon to appear in the dungeon. Goto Casba, talk to the people in there, especially the girl Natalia (Nataria), consult, then goto Uzo and talk to Vivian (Bibian), consult, talk to the rest of the townspeople in Uzo, head back to Casba, talk to everyone and by now you should be getting plenty of people talking about the Blue Dragon in the dungeon. Consult, save then head back into the dungeon, and he should be there. Remember to head to Bortevo afterwards to grab the hovercraft.

Hovercraft

Head to the building next to the save game panel and search it – Hapsby will nerd it up and you can jump into it by pressing R1 when you’re next to the water (saves going into your inventory to active it every time).

Abion/Forgotten Tower and Medusa’s Tower

I found that I did these the opposite order that Omar’s FAQ suggests you do them in owing to what my characters were talking about when using the consult command. I did Abion/Forgotten Tower first and tackled Medusa’s Tower second. I never got around to doing Jara Cave πŸ˜›

Aukuba

Omar notes Aukaba as Twintown; doesn’t really matter, but when all my characters started talking about Aukbara no machi, it confused the buggery out of me. Having only played through Phantasy Star on the SMS once, I had a d’uh moment when I arrived and realised they were one and the same. Go me!

Gaining entrance to the Guaron Morgue

I can’t take credit for this one – Busterbeam over on the GameFAQs board pointed this out ( the original thread is here). To gain entrance to the Guaron Morgue, here’s the full list of what I did: I talked to the two Head Dezorians in Aukuba (they’re in red outfits, each in their own house either side of the town entrance), consulted, went to Guaron, got denied twice, consulted, returned to Aukuba, talked to the Head Dezorian on the left, consulted, returned to Guaron Morgue, and was permitted entry. Thanks Busterbeam!

Getting past the pit in Guaron Morgue

Use Myau’s Report techniqe (also referred to as his trap disarm spell) just prior to the pit in Guaron Morgue that leads yo the Laconian armour. You’ll go straight on top of it and won’t swear at the TV like I did three times before I realiased you had to use his technique πŸ˜›

Ice Dungeon gibberish

This one’s an anomally – using consult after finishing the Guaron Morgue and before heading into the Ice Dungeon, at the end of a conversation Alis exclaims “Ha-a-a [X] [Triangle] [Square] [O] [Triangle] [Square] [O] [X] [X]”. I’ve no idea if this is a fancy cheat or code, but thought I’d note it down regardless.

I think that covers it – again, huge props to the authors of those FAQs, I wouldn’t have even hoped to have made it through Phantasy Star: Generation 1 without your help!

I need to buy 1UP Presents and SCROLL

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I’ve been getting back into the habit of reading Jeremy Parish’s GameSpite blog of late, probably inspired by listening to old Retronauts podcasts (just finished number… 61? It was the Persona podcast). Anywho, apart from wanting to buy the complete set of GameSpite Quarterly to date (now up to Volume 8), he has recently plugged the new on-demand publication coming out of the 1UP stables, 1UP Presents. The page count is low, but given it’s on demand, I think the price isn’t too shabby (available here). The only bummer is that international postage is $13 or so. Since that covers up to 5 magazines in a single hit though, it just means I’ll wait for a few issues to come out to make the most of that postage cost.

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However, what was also interesting is that fellow 1UP stalwart Ray Barnholt has started up another publication via HP’s same MagCloud on-demand print service titled SCROLL. The scope seems a little more retro-focused compared to 1up Presents, but it’s definitely a nice complement. Currently, issues 1 and 2 are available. I love publications on retro stuff (which is why I love Retrogamer), so it’s been added to my “to-get” list πŸ™‚

The good news is that they’re both on MagCloud, so that $13 postage fee for up to five magazines? I’m already at three when you consider there’s one issue of 1UP Presents and two issues of SCROLL available. All I need are two more magazines and I’m sorted for an order πŸ™‚

Overhauling the Sega Astro City – Part 12, replacing the monitor

Of all the aspects of the overhaul, replacing the monitor was the one I was dreading. The big 29″/68cm tubes are heavy, you have to be careful discharging the tubes and I was worried about scratching the new screen πŸ™‚ To my surprise, it actually wasn’t too tricky.

First up, the monitor (i.e. tube, chassis and mounting cage) had already been removed from the cabinet while I was rewiring it. I discharged the tube safely, grabbed a cushion off a nearby couch, and gingerly laid it face-down on the cushion so I could work on the cage and chassis without worrying about cracking the tube:

After using my capable screwdriver that will allow the shaft to bend at 45° and 90° angles and treating it like a wrench with a big phillips head screwdriver tip, I managed to remove the cage from the tube:

With that finished, here’s the chassis I removed the chassis from the cage before starting on the tube:

This left me with a nice empty cage to work with:

Next up, I grabbed the fresh, shiny Universal Chassis I ordered a while back for this job. I sourced the chassis from Jomac, who happen to be an amazing team to work with, provide expert advice and offer extremely competitive prices (in other words, they come extremely highly recommended). I then mounted the chassis to the cage like so:

Easy.

Next up came decasing the tube. I was able to source a Teac 68cm TV circa late-90s/early 00s from my parents that was perfect for the job – 68cm tubes are an almost 1:1 replacement for 29″ arcade tubes and are amazing quality. Paired with a Universal Chassis solution from Jomac, and I had a dual-resolution 15k/24k monitor for the price of a chassis, no need for factoring massive costs for sourcing arcade tubes.

Anywho, the tube was safely discharged and I repeated the same process as before – gingerly lower the whole TV onto the cushion, then begin de-casing it:

A bit of patient gruntwork later, and I’m left with the tube on the cushion awaiting the cage:

Simply mount the tube to the cage very carefully, ensure all the connections are solid, and I went about wiring up the degaussing coil, yoke connections, mounted the neckboard and ensured all the ground connections were fitted. This is the end result:

Front –

Side –

Rear –

The whole process probably only took 30-45 minutes, including discharging the tubes again at the start of the session – I had previously discharged them the day before and did it twice during the session to be extra careful with them.

All that’s left now is to plonk the monitor back in the cabinet, fit the front cover including the bezel, connect all the wires and run a smoke test, then the cabinet will be complete. Expect that report in the following (and hopefully final!) part in this series πŸ™‚

As noted before, posts on the refurb are being done ad-hoc, so to keep track of the whole project, just use the Sega Astro City Overhaul tag, as the whole series will be added to it over time.

Fan translations for Phantasy Star: Generation 1?

As part of my preliminary hacking of Phantasy Star: Generation 1, I ended up doing some searching for basic info like… how to save the game πŸ˜› (top tip – talk to the terminals in the towns using O to save your game)

Anywho, part of this saw a couple of interesting bits on possible fan translations for the game, including this one from jessethehedgehog on YouTube:

In addition, there’s also a thread on Fringes of Algo where someone as recent as April 2011 is talking about translating the game.

Not sure if either project will get anywhere, but it’s still pretty cool. Shame I don’t have the language skills or the programming ability to help out, as it would be great if G1 and G2 of the Sega Ages Phantasy Star releases received an English translation.

Mind, if Sega of America actually translated them and released them when the PS2 was a reasonably viable machine, or even in the aftermath alongside the likes of Sakura Taisen, a lot of rabid fans would have been extremely happy. If value was a problem, jam them on a disc with all the contents from the Phantasy Star Collection disc. Simple.

Well, it probably isn’t, but the internet is a choice platform for people to voice their opinions with realisation of the amount of work required to achieve such an ask πŸ™‚

Overhauling the Sega Astro City – Part 11, rewiring the cabinet

This one is best told in pictures. Let’s start with the before:

Looking inside the cabinet from the outside:

Closer up:

Power supply in focus this time:

Molex connections galore:

And the AC wiring, complete with heatshrink tubing and solder for the spliced connections:

Here’s the aftermath, with all the control panel wiring intact (since it will be reused), and all the excess wiring removed:

And for the sake of completeness, here’s the control panel without the bracket that houses all the molex connectors:

Now that all the wiring is out, next came the step of stripping everything out of the cab – the outer layers were removed that hold the bezel and speakers, exposing the fluro tube, and the monitor in its entirety (cage included) was also removed. To open up the insides for working, I also removed the partition that holds the PCB holder and separates the two halves of the cab. It really is looking like a shell now.

So, let’s start the refit – here’s a shot of the inside of the cab with only the new AC wiring present, with everything terminating to a female socket for ease of use:

Next up, add the step-down transformer to the partition to the right:

Add the partition to the cab and mount the SUN PSU into place; it’s positioned to allow for thick PCB boards, the MAME PCB or CPS2 setups, but still retain access to the unit for adjusting DC voltages:

… and another shot:

This next show shows the control box and the power board attached to the side of the cabinet:

The following closeups demonstrate when the control box and power board sit:

… and another:

… and another one:

Almost there – the JAMMA harness has been added, molex connections are complete and cable-tied close to the frame, JAMMA harness is hooked up and some RCA connections have been added for the output on the control box:

And there we go – all finished and much neater than before!

That takes care of the cabinet, but what about the control panel? We can’t forget that! Here’s a shot with the amp installed with all the wiring to the speakers and control box completed and the bracket re-installed:

And here’s the final shot with extra earth wiring grounding the monitor frame, amp, bracket and the coin slot chute/coin box:

Bit of a marathon run, but it came out really well. Next up – the new monitor!

As noted before, posts on the refurb are being done ad-hoc, so to keep track of the whole project, just use the Sega Astro City Overhaul tag, as the whole series will be added to it over time.