Support NeoGAF

xexex · Mar 8, 2006

I managed to obtain a July 1992 copy of GamePro magazine. It's got Alien3 on its cover.

This magazine is important (or should be important to Phantasy Star phans) because it contains some news on the never-released 'Phantasy Star 4: The Return of Alis' for the Megadrive-Genesis and MegaCD-SegaCD.

if you cannot read the text in the picture, I've got it typed out below.
on page 75 is the following, quote:

"Phantasy Star IV: The Return of Alis is due in 12 meg form for the MegaDrive this year. The CD version will be 20 times the size of the cart. The story involves an intergalactic slave trade and occurs right after Phantasy Star III, which rumor has it will also come to CD - suitably enhanced of course. Phantasy Star vets are fore-warned that the Alis connection is shaky. The name's in the game for nostalgia only, but rest assured that the Dark Force is involved."

add to that, SegaBase also mentioned Phantasy Star IV: The Return of Alis

http://www.goodcowfilms.com/farm/games/segabase_archives/SegaBase - Sega CD.htm
http://www.eidolons-inn.net/segabase/SegaBase-SegaCD.html
(thanks to Goodcow and eidolons-inn.net for archiving these)

"In terms of software, the biggest news by far was with the Phantasy
Star RPG series - the closest thing Sega had to Square's Final Fantasy
franchise - with two Mega CD titles announced as being in development.
The more notable of the two was the all-new title The Return of Alis,
which was to take place immediately after the events depicted in
Phantasy Star 3 and tell the story of the fight against a revival of
the intergalactic slave trade. This new installment in the saga would
be 20 times the size of the earlier game and would incorporate both
audio and anime clips."

"Sega cancelled the planned Sega CD release of Phantasy Star 4, opting
instead for a cartridge-based Genesis game that bore little
resemblance to its original Sega CD concept."

now combined that with the mysterious picture of a Phantasy Star game in
the May-June 1991 issue of MEGA PLAY magazine

and you almost definitally have a Phantasy Star game (two versions of it even)
that was designed between PS III and the PS IV that actually came out later.

for the love of all that is good, someone needs to interview Naka, Reiko Kodama
and any of the other main PS designers about this unreleased Phantasy Star game!

bjork · Mar 8, 2006

I have that issue, heh

xexex · Mar 8, 2006

I've got both magazines now

Fishie flop oog · Mar 8, 2006

I did and we asked, the game like many others went trough a lot of changes before release thats all.
Not a secret unreleased PS4 or whatever.

xexex · Mar 8, 2006

Hajiki said:
I did and we asked, the game like many others went trough a lot of changes before release thats all.
Not a secret unreleased PS4 or whatever.

the only fairly well-documented change to PS4 that most people remember were
the first person PS1-style dungeons that were cut out.

Fishie flop oog · Mar 8, 2006

xexex said:
the only fairly well-documented change to PS4 that most people remember were
the first person PS1-style dungeons that were cut out.

Yah, and those are mentioned in the last Kodama interiew we did.

http://www.got-next.com/features_read.php?id=73

GotNext: Early screens of Phantasy Star IV showed the game in 3D dungeons similar to the first installment. Why did you go with overhead view dungeons in the end?

Kodama: We really wanted to use those 3D dungeons in the game. The ideas we had proved to be a little too much for the MegaDrive hardware to handle. We just couldn't convey the sort of setting we wanted, so we went with [the] overhead view in the end.

Shinobi · Mar 9, 2006

The one game-related job I'd love to do is run a magazine or website that covers the games that were never released. Stuff like FX Fighter and Starfox 2 on the SNES, Eternal Champions 3, Vectorman 3 and VF3 on the Saturn, Giest Force on the DC and a host of others. I find stuff like that a hell of a lot more interesting then the usual sales figures/review scores banter that takes place on various forums.

bjork · Mar 9, 2006

Shinobi said:
The one game-related job I'd love to do is run a magazine or website that covers the games that were never released. Stuff like FX Fighter and Starfox 2 on the SNES, Eternal Champions 3, Vectorman 3 and VF3 on the Saturn, Giest Force on the DC and a host of others. I find stuff like that a hell of a lot more interesting then the usual sales figures/review scores banter that takes place on various forums.

The Lost Levels is like that, it just doesn't seem to have a lot of content so far.

xexex · Mar 9, 2006

Hajiki said:
Yah, and those are mentioned in the last Kodama interiew we did.

http://www.got-next.com/features_read.php?id=73

GotNext: Early screens of Phantasy Star IV showed the game in 3D dungeons similar to the first installment. Why did you go with overhead view dungeons in the end?

Kodama: We really wanted to use those 3D dungeons in the game. The ideas we had proved to be a little too much for the MegaDrive hardware to handle. We just couldn't convey the sort of setting we wanted, so we went with [the] overhead view in the end.

yup, I remember reading that last year. It would be nice to see an in-depth interview of all the major Phantasy Star staff, and get some real in-depth info on ALL the changes that happened to PSIV, especially info about the CD version.

nitewulf · Mar 9, 2006

Shinobi said:
The one game-related job I'd love to do is run a magazine or website that covers the games that were never released. Stuff like FX Fighter and Starfox 2 on the SNES, Eternal Champions 3, Vectorman 3 and VF3 on the Saturn, Giest Force on the DC and a host of others. I find stuff like that a hell of a lot more interesting then the usual sales figures/review scores banter that takes place on various forums.

the would be interesting, but how much content could there really be? i mean content for games that people would actually care to read about, not just any cancelled game.

Shinobi · Mar 9, 2006

Heh, probably not a lot...maybe it'd work better if it was made for a single book.

fennec fox · Mar 9, 2006

Shinobi said:
The one game-related job I'd love to do is run a magazine or website that covers the games that were never released. Stuff like FX Fighter and Starfox 2 on the SNES, Eternal Champions 3, Vectorman 3 and VF3 on the Saturn, Giest Force on the DC and a host of others. I find stuff like that a hell of a lot more interesting then the usual sales figures/review scores banter that takes place on various forums.

But, sir, it exists! It's at www.lostlevels.org

djtiesto · Mar 9, 2006

Wasn't PSIII supposed to be for the Sega CD originally? I think I remember reading an old mag (EGM, Gamepro?) where they showed a screenie of PSIII in a whole page devoted to the Mega CD. And also, wasn't PSIII gonna eventually have a much greater connection to the series as a whole (although start kind of off in left field, with the connections being gradually revealed to you)... but the dev team was so rushed for time?

Shinobi · Mar 9, 2006

Heh, I'd never seen that Lost Levels site before...thanks for the heads up.

xexex · Mar 9, 2006

Shinobi said:
Heh, I'd never seen that Lost Levels site before...thanks for the heads up.

yeah that's a pretty kewl website

Mejilan · Mar 9, 2006

Please stop taunting me with images from a franchise that died all too soon.

MightyHedgehog · Mar 9, 2006

Mejilan said:
Please stop taunting me with images from a franchise that died all too soon.

Stop jinxing it, man! It'll happen...someday. PSV will be made...someday.

xexex · Mar 9, 2006

Mejilan said:
Please stop taunting me with images from a franchise that died all too soon.

sorry man. I wanted Sega to released the 'real' Phantasy Star IV which was going to be on CD, more than anything.... between seeing the graphics of that Phantasy Star game in the pic from Mega Play, knowing that the CD version of IV would have alot more 'meat', and knowing about the scrapped first-person dungeons, I say that End of the Millenium was a decent but very rushed PS game with all the cool ideas axed, and it left me wanting a lot more for the last true game in the series.

sorry I just can't 'let things go' ... I like to dig up old bones :lol

Mejilan · Mar 9, 2006

Lol, I wasn't really talking to you, or anyone, specifically. I loved PSIV, but I still cry at night that it was the last. Well, maybe not cry.

djtiesto · Mar 9, 2006

I'd love to see a Phantasy Star, set up like the traditional ones of days past (including: turn based battle systems with macros, insanely large and confusing dungeons, great cast of characters, anime cutscenes), but taking place originally on Earth a few hundred years into the future, as we begin colonizing space and eventually destroying the environment further... ending up set to land on Algol, the ending tying into Phantasy Star 2.

I'm so in love with this series, I've had dreams about a Phantasy Star 5 before... one of them was on the Saturn and a 2D RPG resembling PS4 (the first part was quenching a bug infestation in a greenhouse on Motavia), and another one was in 3D where you were behind the wheels of a Landrover through a dense tropical rainforest.

Zombie James · Mar 9, 2006

These have always been my favourite screenshots in the "beta/unreleased/conceptual" category:

Conceptual screenshots of FFVII on the SNES.

Mejilan · Mar 9, 2006

That looks like FFVI gone nutsoid.

xexex · Mar 9, 2006

I would've loved a MASSIVE turn-based Phantasy Star 5 on Saturn
(or Dreamcast) with sprite-based 2D graphcs for the overhead view

like this:

and sprite-based scaling 3D graphics for the dungeons & towers

like this:

and perhaps sprite-scaled 3D (not polygonal) landscapes as seen in the first JurassicPark Sega arcade game

but free roaming for Phantasy Star's massive worlds.

GotchaForce · Mar 9, 2006

Holy shit at the FF7 concepts. Those are real?

xexex · Mar 9, 2006

_leech_ said:
These have always been my favourite screenshots in the "beta/unreleased/conceptual" category:

Conceptual screenshots of FFVII on the SNES.

wow those are pretty awesome.

Shinobi · Mar 9, 2006

Sugarman said:
Holy shit at the FF7 concepts. Those are real?

Nah...they were from a CG demo Square created for Siggraph in late '95. Alas several magazines assumed it was a demo from FF7 on the N64, and it's something that's stuck till this very day. :lol

xexex · Mar 9, 2006

Shinobi said:
Nah...they were from a CG demo Square created for Siggraph in late '95. Alas several magazines assumed it was a demo from FF7 on the N64, and it's something that's stuck till this very day. :lol

he's talking about the above 2D SNES FF7 concepts, not the SGI-Square Final Fantasy 3D demo that ran on SGI workstations that people thought were for an Ultra 64 FF game.

xexex · Mar 9, 2006

Mejilan said:
That looks like FFVI gone nutsoid.

it's possible those screens were made up by a magazine, but I don't know.

neptunes · Mar 9, 2006

Interesting ff7 concept screens, but it looks fake.

xexex · Mar 9, 2006

Sega Phantasy Star IV concept = probably real

SNES Final Fantasy VII = probably fake

Fishie flop oog · Mar 9, 2006

xexex said:
yup, I remember reading that last year. It would be nice to see an in-depth interview of all the major Phantasy Star staff, and get some real in-depth info on ALL the changes that happened to PSIV, especially info about the CD version.

There never was real CD version.

john tv · Mar 9, 2006

Gamepro wasn't too clued in to reality back then, so I wouldn't put too much weight in any of this "news." The Mega CD was never selling like mad in Japan, either.

madara · Mar 9, 2006

Yes I have that famitus issue and have been talking about it for years. From my understanding that was real footage FF7 snes. Glad to see someone else scan that stuff after all these years. Oh, how I pine for real PS5 as well. We miss you Nei.

xexex · Mar 9, 2006

Hajiki said:
There never was real CD version.

wa, what? I was certain that Sega was at least planning it. even if it didn't get made.

john tv said:
Gamepro wasn't too clued in to reality back then, so I wouldn't put too much weight in any of this "news." The Mega CD was never selling like mad in Japan, either.

but what about SegaBase? it was not just GamePro.

ah well, not like we will EVER find out the truth. Sega of Japan is pretty tight about giving info about what they've worked on. sigh.

Fishie flop oog · Mar 9, 2006

xexex said:
wa, what? I was certain that Sega was at least planning it. even if it didn't get made.

but what about SegaBase? it was not just GamePro.

ah well, not like we will EVER find out the truth. Sega of Japan is pretty tight about giving info about what they've worked on. sigh.

Back then they were considering CD versions of their cart games with a lil added content.
Most never got made since rom prices fell fast.

xexex · Mar 10, 2006

Hajiki said:
Back then they were considering CD versions of their cart games with a lil added content.
Most never got made since rom prices fell fast.

sigh. the MegaCD was capable of doing a truly incredible Phantasy Star. I guess it wasn't successful enough to warrant a major PS game.

Dsal · Mar 10, 2006

Someday there will be a true PS5... right? :|

xexex · Mar 10, 2006

Dsal said:
Someday there will be a true PS5... right? :|

I wish.

look at the pictures I posted in post #23. that's how I want it. no polygons. just sprite generated visuals. and a huge massive quest that's far larger than PS I, II, III, IV combined.

Support NeoGAF

Phantasy Star 4: The Return Of Alis (GamePro 1992, SegaBase Internet), unreleased

Banned

Member

Banned

Banned

Banned

Banned

Member

Member

Banned

Member

Member

ferrets ferrets ferrets ferrets FERRETS!!!

is beloved, despite what anyone might say

Member

Banned

Running off of Custom Firmware

Member

Banned

Running off of Custom Firmware

is beloved, despite what anyone might say

Banned

Running off of Custom Firmware

Banned

Member

Banned

Member

Banned

Banned

Member

Banned

Banned

Member

Member

Banned

Banned

Banned

it's going to come out of you and it's going to taste so good

Banned

Similar threads