In anticipation of next week's Phantasy Star Portable release, Sega of America was nice enough to provide PSO-World.com with exclusive screenshots of some of the awesome new weapons that will be appearing in the game! This collection includes three weapons from the Phantasy Star Online series, along with two brand new weapon designs! Scroll down to check out pictures and information for these weapons. Be sure to click on the thumbnails to see larger versions!
Many thanks goes to Sega of America and RubyEclipse for providing these screenshots. Remember to visit PSO-World.com for all the latest Phantasy Star Portable news! Feel free to discuss the new pics over in our Phantasy Star Portable forum.
An English version of the Phantasy Star Portable demo is now available at the Playstation Store! Players will be able to create a character, play through the first mission, and try out several missions in multi-mode. Also, a few PSP-exclusive weapons are available in the demo as rare drops. The demo is 272 MB and is rated E for everyone.
Credit goes to RisingSun for bringing us this news. You can share your impressions of the demo in this PSO-World forum thread.
According to this official blog post, Phantasy Star Portable is slated to appear March 3rd in the United States.* This date has appeared recently on a number of online retail sites, however this is the first mention by Sega themselves that they've narrowed down the date.
A discussion post is already up in our forums.* There is just one month to go until release!
According to gaming news site 1Up.com, SEGA have confirmed that Phantasy Star Portable is scheduled to be released in the United States in March of 2009! An exact date within the month has not been revealed, but stay tuned as we'll be sure to report any information on that as it surfaces.
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Special thanks to Sydz for the news tip!
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Update: In an interview with director Satoshi Sakai, conducted by 1Up.com, it was confirmed that the localized release of Phantasy Star Portable will not support the character upload feature that the Japanese version has. To clarify, this only means that you will not be able to transfer the likeness of your character (with some items, Meseta and a small jump on leveling) from AOTI to PSP.
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Update: The official press release has been posted here. The initial batch of screens have been posted here.
According to IGN, the PlayStation Network will receive enhanced capabilities this fall with the PSP in mind. All models are of course supported.
First off, the PlayStation Store will be accessible directly from a PSP. You can download the demo for Phantasy Star Portable (and other things) directly.* This is as opposed to using a PS3 or PC.
Most excitingly, there will be infrastructure capabilities for PS3 owners. Many games that currently only support ad-hoc multiplayer will be able to be played online (without the use of a certain unofficial application). Users will not only be able to find games, but also be able to take advantage of text and voice chat. Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G is the first announced title to be supported. I imagine there is also room for a title that has cleared 600k copies (and is currently the 5th best selling PSP game in Japan).
Gamasutra: I was amused to see the Phantasy Star Portable news, because it was like a lightbulb went off at Sega. "Maybe we should take our idea back from Monster Hunter!"While a Western release has not been formally announced yet, these comments should be taken as strong indication that Phantasy Star Portable will be released outside Japan.
Simon Jeffery: Right. (laughter) I think that's exactly what happened at Sega!
Gamasutra: Capcom has had difficulty putting that model forward in the west, but Phantasy Star has done okay. Maybe not as well as it should, but okay.
Simon Jeffery: It's done okay, and there's still quite a lot of people out there playing it every month.
Gamasutra: So do you think you can take that market here with that title?
Simon Jeffery: I think that it's not going to be a blockbuster success, but I think it will be a niche success. I'm certainly hopeful that it's more of a success in the west than Monster Hunter has been. There is a built-in audience for it already there.
I think the crossover of the PSP ownership will work quite nicely, so we're fairly hopeful we can make something out of it. It's not going to be huge, but hopefully it'll be interesting.
Good morning/afternoon.
I am conducting a survey on NGS's game design with the hopes of submitting the feedback to Sega once an adequate amount