Yuji Naka looks back at Phantasy Star Online, 20 years later

[Maulcun]

Phantasy Star Online wasn’t the first Internet-connected multiplayer game on Dreamcast. That distinction belongs to ChuChu Rocket!, which Sega and developer Sonic Team made as a data streaming test case in preparation for PSO.

But Phantasy Star Online was the first console-based online action game to gather thousands of players from around the world on the same servers, allowing communication regardless of region, using a language-agnostic icon-based system.

While Sega had experimented with online services and tech for years prior, with the Dreamcast it included a modem in every console, meaning that every Dreamcast owner could be, in theory, connected. For a brief moment, it seemed as if the technology for consumer-focused online gaming had finally caught up with Sega’s console ambitions.

As Sonic Team leader and PSO producer Yuji Naka would later lament, though, his team ended up completing this pioneering game just in time to see the company abandon the hardware business. Although the series would live on, eventually finding success on GameCube, Xbox, and PC, Naka originally hoped PSO would revive the Dreamcast’s fading fortunes. Unfortunately, the console’s fate was sealed well before PSO’s arrival.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Sega’s groundbreaking franchise, which spawned numerous successors like Phantasy Star Universe, Phantasy Star Zero, Phantasy Star Portable, and, ultimately, Phantasy Star Online 2 (which, despite launching in Japan in 2012, has only recently reached English-speaking players).

To commemorate this anniversary, we recently tracked down eight members of Sonic Team’s original PSO development staff to look back at the 20 years that have passed since the game’s debut, share insights on the challenges they faced, and reminisce about how PSO gathered thousands of players around the world on a daily basis to play together.

We’ll be running these conversations as a series of interviews over the coming weeks, starting with the below translated email conversation with producer Yuji Naka.

Producer - Yuji Naka
Read the article here - https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2...source=twitter

Director - Takao Miyoshi
https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2...source=twitter

Composer and Sound Designer - Hideaki Kobayashi
https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2...eaki-kobayashi

Script writer Akinori Nishiyama and Effects Designer Takanori Fukazaw

https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2...iew-angry-fans

Lead programmer Akio Setsumasa, character programmer Yasuhiro Takahashi, and enemy programmer Masakazu Miura
https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2...tric-prototype

Yuji Nakazawa, PSO 2’s North America producer
https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2...-online-2-west