PS Collection Recension

From the moment GBA Phantasy Star Collection was announced, I knew I was getting a Gameboy Advance. Even with the regrettable absence of Phantasy Star: End of the Millennium -- leaving the core trilogy broken -- for me, it was enough just to play Phantasy Star II on the go. I didn't need to know anything about the compilation, aside from its pending release -- which is good, because up until I had the cartridge in my hand there was barely any information available on the project.

After some research, I found that Digital Eclipse had a reasonably good reputation for some of their retro compilations, but it bothered me a little that once again Sega had allowed THQ to farm out one of their valuable series to a pretty much unknown fourth party. I really wish they'd quit it.

What exactly did I expect from this compilation? I'm not sure. What do you expect?

Take a look at the cover art. What do you see? Do you see Rolf, Alis, and Mieu? Or do you see an earnest, somewhat competent, yet generally sloppy attempt to approximate the original source material?

I mean, the cover's not bad. It's obvious some effort went into it -- even if the logo is hideous, Rolf looks constipated, and Alis and Mieu each have their respective... problems. On the other hand, it's far from great. And it's obvious that not enough effort went in. I'd have preferred some of the original production art from the games, or a new commission from Tohru Yoshida. But even if it's far from perfect, I can live with it. It just feels half-assed to me.

What perplexes me is that three members of Overworks are credited for "overseeing" this project -- namely, Rieko Kodama, Tohru Yoshida, and End of the Millennium programmer Yoshiaki Endo. What exactly did they do? Aside from the selection graphics -- which I'll come to in a moment -- it doesn't seem -- yes, I'll get to this as well -- like they must have been very involved in the actual development.

The best guess I can make is that the Overworks trio must have been the operatives who Sega picked to act in the suit role and give their final okay before the Sega name was slapped on the cartridge. Who better to judge if a Phantasy Star compilation is fit to release than the First Lady of RPGs and her cohorts?

Well. It is fit to release. But golly, I wish I could say something more positive. Wait, I can:

The main menu and selection screen are really pretty.

What appears to be a brand-new Yoshida illustration of Alis, is framed in the center of an attractive, ancient-high-tech facade. A well-produced new medley arrangement plays in the background, consisting of the theme music to each of the three games in the compilation. Bo's theme for the first two games flow together with hardly a seam. One gets an immediate sense for how a new Phantasy Star game might look on the Gameboy Advance.

The game also comes with a decently-produced manual, and a thoughtful fold-out equipment chart with lists of prices, armor and weapon strengths, and of who can use what. The manual is nothing special, although it's tastefully produced and it contains more than enough information to get a novice player started in any of the three games.

On closer examination, however, I notice that some of the Phantasy Star II techniques are either missing or incorrectly-defined. There are at least half a dozen rather obvious errors that I can spot right off, so I wonder how many more I'm just missing.

I also note the advertisement for Sonic Team's Phantasy Star Online Episode 1 & 2 for the Gamecube. It occurs to me that this compilation was probably never intended for a high-profile treatment. This collection is promotional tie-in material, just as the GBA Shinobi game undoubtedly is supposed to be. I begin to think there's a reason why Sega isn't spending time and resources on Gameboy Advance development. There are real games to make. Let the no-name developers do Sega's advertising for them.

Wow, I didn't think I could get a whole lot more cynical than I was. But I think I'm tapping a new vein, here. I wonder how far I can carry this.

But that would explain a lot, wouldn't it. A quick-and-dirty port of the original three US releases, complete with their infamously terrible translations. Contracted by Sega of America, to a small American developer, to be published by a sloppy, unfocused American publishing house. Obviously no budget at all and a rushed timeframe, or else why not spring for the larger cartridge and include End of the Millennium as well? I'd have gladly paid a few dollars more, and waited another couple of months.

This compilation was never meant for posterity; it's meant for a cheap domestic buck, while the Phantasy Star Online fad is still going strong. I'll be very surprised if this production ever gets published back in Japan.

Enough speculation, however. The game is here, now. So what to make of it?

First, the good. Aside from the title menu, which I find thoroughly neat-o, I notice how much more crisp and attractive all three of the games appear, compared to what I'm used to. This is mostly due to the small size and by-pixel contrast of the GBA screen, but I still am surprised by how much detail I never even noticed before.

I said it before, but I am also struck by how contemporary Phantasy Star 1 still manages to look, on this hardware. Even without any graphical enhancement, it can pretty much hold its own next to its more advanced siblings. In particular, Naka's 3-D dungeons still impress.

Speaking of the dungeons, Digital Eclipse did a very good job in refitting each game's graphics to the lower resolution of the GBA screen. The dungeons remain properly fullscreen, with only a couple of harmless anti-aliasing tricks to betray the change. To be perfectly honest, I've been having trouble figuring out where the graphical nips and tucks were taken -- and I've played these games to death, for over a decade.

The cyberspace battle scenes of Phantasy Star II look just right. The first-person battles from the original game look just as swell as the dungeons. The only obvious visible change I can discern is the overlapping manner in which menu windows now (necessarily) open in Phantasy Star II.

With all of the graphical power of the Gameboy Advance, I should certainly hope that a Master System and a couple of first- and second-generation Genesis games would prove little strain to the hardware -- and indeed; every frame of animation, every detail seems to be intact. All three games are fast and fluid.

If anything, they feel even smoother in places than the original versions. It's nothing much, and almost wholly intangible, but I like to think that I can sense where a few fractions of a second of familiar slowdown or processing or load time have been removed. All three games feel just a little more responsive -- and thus less exhausting -- than I remember them to be.

Something else I note is that the button placement is now consistent through the three games. Unless my memory is wonkier than I believe, I recall some frustration in the past, moving from game to game. Maybe it was just End of the Millennium, which I know has a different default button setup than Phantasy Star II. Anyway, the A and B buttons now do the same thing in each of the three games. So this is helpful.

Really the best thing about this collection, though, is simply that it's portable. I don't have to set aside a huge lump of time in order to play any of the games; I don't have to mess around with my Power Base Converter in order to get Phantasy Star 1 to work. There aren't any controllers and cables. I'm not trapped on the couch or the floor.

Wherever I am, I can just pull out my GBA, level-up for a few minutes, teleport back to town and save, then be back to my business. It's a lot less daunting to gradually chip away at a Phantasy Star game than to face it as an onerous, time-evaporating task. I think the games are all the more enjoyable to nibble than to swallow whole.

The problem is that this is about as unambitious a compilation as you can imagine. It is standard practice by now that even direct ports will tend to make some kind of concession to their new format, and to the fact that they are in fact ports rather than original games. Look at even the Xbox versions of Silent Hill 2 and Metal Gear Solid 2. The Gamecube version of Sonic Adventure 2. Hell, look at the original Phantasy Star Collection, for the Saturn!

In the Saturn Collection -- which included End of the Millennium -- there weren't many changes to the original games, but there was a wealth of extra production art and information on the design process for each of the games. Further, an extra run feature was added to each of the earlier games, to bring the older characters up to the brisker walking speed in End of the Millennium.

Why is there no run button in this compilation? The triggers are left totally unused. Why not assign run to the left trigger? It would make the games (particularly Phantasy Star III) a lot easier and less frustrating to play, and it would have only taken a few minutes to code into each of the games. Were the design team completely unaware of the previous Collection?

There are any number of other missed opportunities, from the obvious and helpful to the obscure and potentially wonderful. Why not add a play timer for each of the games? Record how long the player has spent on each of them, either for posterity or to unlock extra features. Why not add a simple monster encyclopedia, which collects all of the monsters found and defeated in each game, and gives a smidgeon of information on each? And what about the kan games?

In the early '90s, Sega released a series of simple parlour games and text adventures for their Megadrive modem service in Japan. These games were later compiled on a set of two "kan" discs for the Mega CD. Amongst the tile puzzles and other random nonsense were a group of eight short adventures that centered around each of the main characters in Phantasy Star II. Produced by the original Phantasy Star team, these games give some backstory for everyone from Rolf to Shir, and chronicle the events which led up to the start of Phantasy Star II.

There isn't a lot of character exposition within the body of Phantasy Star II. So why not thrown in the kan games? They can't take up much space. Every time the player finds a new party member, then a new kan game could be unlocked and accessed from an outside menu. These games have never been released in English before, and a compilation like this is the perfect opportunity to give them their day in the sun -- plus, what a neat bonus for the long-time Phantasy Star fan.

Of course, if Digital Eclipse can't be bothered to retranslate the original games, or to use the high-quality FM soundtrack from the Japanese version of Phantasy Star 1 rather than the comparably poor Western version, then it should be ridiculous to expect this kind of extra effort or imagination.

But if they're really not going to do anything special with the compilation, then how about at least paying attention to the fact that this is a Gameboy Advance game, huh? And that the original games are over a decade old? As great as they are, they were not intended for this platform. And from a modern standpoint there are frankly a few awkward issues in each of the games which could have easily been remedied with no harm whatsoever to the original design.

If the games are now portable, why don't they seem to know it? I can save anywhere in Phantasy Star 1, and I can find my visiphone in Phantasy Star II, but why is there no quicksave option added for the third game?

Digital Eclipse didn't even have to mess with the design of the games, although I can't imagine that adding a "save" option to the Phantasy Star III menu should be much of a problem. You see, they've already added a strange and arbitrary pause menu to each of the three games; a menu with "continue" and "exit" options. So why not just add "save" to the list?

Failing that -- and despite the intrinsic demands of the portable format, I can understand how one might be apprehensive to mess with an established save structure -- what about sleep mode? Need I remind you that this is the Gameboy Advance? Why is it that seemingly none of the system's inherent capabilities are being put to use?

Coming off of the pretty-but-mundane Golden Sun and the enjoyable Metroid Fusion, I have witnessed the glory of sleep mode. I need to quickly put down my GBA, and I'm still far from a save point? I just put my system into hibernation. If I'm not allowed to save when I need to, then how about at least allowing me to put my Gameboy into an extended pause?

Something else that confuses me a little is the lack of any kind of options menu for the compilation. It's great that the buttons are consistent throughout the three games, but why am I not allowed to remap them? The Genesis had three default buttons; the GBA has four. Why can't I put my functions where I want them? Map a special command to one of the triggers? Why are two buttons (plus select) left completely unused?

Further, if they're going to add that odd pause menu in each of the games, then... Well. I just don't get this. Why would I want to so suddenly, quickly exit from any of the games that I would need to do it at the press of a button? I can only imagine the mistakes this will lead to, although I've yet to be so bleary to exit a game by accident. And yet, aside from soft-resetting the system, why is there no easy way back to the main menu from the title screens of any of the three games? This seems like a strange and awkward design decision to me, altogether.

While we're here, why is it that the saving mechanism and the pause menu for Phantasy Star 1 are so different from the ones in the two Genesis games. From what I've read elsewhere, I understand that all three games have been totally reprogrammed from the ground up, using the original art resources. So what's up with the inconsistency? If the idea was to make the alterations fit better into the first game (which they do), then why not make the changes just as seamless in the two later games, and work them into each game's style?

Finally, if I were to do a port of Phantasy Star II, one of the first things I would do is that I would fix the menu system. After thirteen years of fighting with constantly opening and closing windows, and button assignments switching back and forth, I've had enough. Especially if I were re-coding the game from scratch -- why would I want to recreate such an irritating system?

If we were to stop here, we could call this compilation merely uninspired but adequate. So there's absolutely nothing special about GBA Phantasy Star Collection. A set of three near-flawless ports would still be enough for me, even if I can dream of how much better things could have been.

So why can't we even get that?

The most obvious, and disappointing, shortcut for me is the care with which the games' famous music has been treated. The Phantasy Star 1 music isn't only the inferior Western version; even that hasn't been recreated properly. How Master System can sound even tinnier and more washed-out on a system as powerful as the Gameboy Advance, is entirely beyond me.

What's even more bewildering for me, however, is that both of the Genesis games are now in mono. What on Earth? On the original hardware, the stereo separation was clean, distinct, and well-produced in both Phantasy Star II and III. The twangy, distinctive Yamaha FM chip of the Genesis was -- if nothing else -- clear, if used well. And there are few instances outside of Yuzo Koshiro in which this sound chip was put to better use.

Why is it that the music in each of these games is now in a muffled mono recording? Why is it so dissonant? Why is it that none of the instruments have exactly the right timbre? Some of Ippo's previously-beautiful music in Phantasy Star III is now grating and off-tune. And it doesn't help that one of the music channels is apparently MISSING!

This is some of the best game music ever written. Why is it being treated so carelessly? Hell, the music is one of the strongest features of Phantasy Star III; it's the one positive thing that almost everyone has to comment on, when discussing the game. So why has it been magically made to suck? And if Overworks were indeed involved in the design -- which, according to the credits, they weren't -- why did they let this slip through?

The credit for "Sound Design and Production", according to the game's manual, goes to a certain Robert Baffy. (Oh, charming.) So now you have someone to blame, if need be. Admittedly, the sound in these games could be a lot worse. But that doesn't mean that it's good. Or even adequate. Tolerable, perhaps. Acceptable? No.

The vivid, indeed nigh irradiant, colours of the Phantasy Star games have also been sort of washed out. All three games, but to my eyes particularly Phantasy Star II, looks overexposed. The blacks are black, but everything else is too bright, too desaturated, and somewhat lacking in contrast. If I play the game in a dark room, the balance actually looks almost right -- but if I play in any substantial amount of light... well, it's not that bad. But I notice it, and I'm not the only one.

I guess I can see why a couple of save slots have been removed from Phantasy Star II, considering the fact that there are two other games on the same cartridge. I can deal with the occasional weird bit of slowdown when reading from save data, although I don't see why it should be needed. I can put up with the strange window which pops up for a fraction of a second, startling me, every time I try to save the game.

But I can't understand a crash bug.

Need I repeat myself? A goddamned CRASH BUG. In a console game. A handheld game, at that.

If you recall, I mentioned that the save system in Phantasy Star 1 is different from the one used in the other two games. In the later games the player is faced with a brief, startling pop-up window which instructs the player not to turn off the GBA during that eighth of a second. In the first game, the entire game is put on hold as the screen fills with a "Now Saving" display. When the game is saved, the screen returns to normal and the game continues.

Most of the time this works fine, but perhaps one time out of twelve the save screen will not appear. Instead, the game will crash to either a blue or a black screen. The only recourse is to switch the system off and then on again.

The bug appears to be truly random; there is no obvious way to directly replicate or avoid it. The good news is that this doesn't appear to damage whatever your old save file is. But the bad news is that the game doesn't get the chance to save your new progress, either. It's become a paranoid gamble with me, every time I save the game. The music cuts out as the game switches modes, and in that fraction of a second I don't know whether the game will crash or merely save as normal.

This isn't the only bug, either. If you try to talk to monsters during battle, then the battle menus will remain frozen on screen when the game switches back to exploration mode. They can be cleared by getting into another fight and letting them close naturally when the battle is over, but really. This is a pretty obvious bug. It can be found with only a few minutes of playtesting.

I can deal with all of the other problems in this compilation, but I don't see any reason to forgive such a lapse in quality control. And further, I don't see why anyone should be expected to put up with such carelessness.

And that's the operative word here, I believe. Even from the opening corporate logos, one can see the careless, sloppy way that ill-fitting text is superimposed at the top of each screen. The Digital Eclipse logo animation itself feels half-assed and amateurish. If they don't put more work into even their own logo, maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that the games aren't treated with just a little more reverence.

What did Overworks do? I don't know. But if the end result has this many problems, I'd hate to see how it could have gone without their input.