I was feeling pretty frustrated with modern journalism pretending that there were no playable and "respected" women in vidya until they were forced in for woke marketing
so I planned a series of illustrations celebrating girls, but... there's just too many of them... (ෆ˙ᵕ˙ෆ)♡
which is good, and I hope to draw some
but for now, here is Alisa Landale, the main character of Phantasy Star, released in 1987
I also play Phantasy Star right now, and technically, it is indeed, masterfully crafted! it makes you want to hope that the main coder still has a successful career... aaaand, haha, no, this is Yuji Naka and his latest work is FUCKING Balan Wonderworld
they say that the majority of team working on Phantasy Star were also women, the main designer certainly was! but with others it's more difficult to establish because everyone used nicknames as per S*GA's policy
@matana All the sequels of the original series had male protagonists though.
@xianc78 yup, rip... I wonder whether that could happen because the journos made up a big stink of "being forced to play as a girl, eeeeew" because stink like that did happen at times
but afaik, by the time Phantasy Star 3 got released, the series went FUBAR, as per S*GA's usual course
@matana
>I wonder whether that could happen because the journos made up a big stink of "being forced to play as a girl, eeeeew" because stink like that did happen at times
Phantasy Star II was originally going to star Lutz (or Noah in the English translation) from the first game after a 1000 stasis, but later they decided to have the character be a descendant of Alis (or Alisa in the Japanese version; I'm used to the US translation). You do play as a female in Phantasy Star Gaiden for the Game Gear though (spoiler alert: that's because it turns out the main character is a clone of Alis).
My guess is that the creators didn't want the series to be associated with the magical girl genre which wasn't the direction they intend to go. And they didn't want the series to just appeal to girls. That's just my guess though.
>but afaik, by the time Phantasy Star 3 got released, the series went FUBAR, as per S*GA's usual course
Phantasy Star III was a departure of the rest of the series. It was made by a separate team (the Phantasy Star team was working on Sonic the Hedgehog at the time) and they decided that they would have the game set in what appears to be a medieval fantasy world that seems to have no connection to the Algo system, until the end of the game when you realize what's truly going on. It was also painfully rushed. It was an ambitious game, but it being rushed, being set in a different setting, and having a different artstyle made it a flop.
Phantasy Star IV brought things back together, but it concluded the original series. They never intended to continue it. Phantasy Star Online was created by a completely different team, and from what I've heard, it wasn't originally a Phantasy Star game, but the science fantasy setting made some of the developers think of Phantasy Star.
