Long before the Version 1... Long before the Dreamcast... Long before the 1990's, a small organization of game programs got together to make what we would consider gaming history... Phantasy Star Online.

It all started with a small group of lonely teenaged computer nerds. They called themselves "Sonic Team," after the Sonic restaurant in their town that they would go to on Friday nights and attempt to hit on cute car hops. Their attempts at getting laid usually ended in failure. After all, even back in the 80's, girls wouldn't sleep with gamers.

With their ego's bruised and their balls blue (a forshadowing of another popular game series these guys would be involved with), they would return to their Comodore 64's and dream of making the world's greatest RPG. It had to have action. It had to have adventure. It had to have amazing graphics. It had to make use of the latest technologies, like Al Gore's newest creation, the Internet.

Most of all, it had to be on the best selling game system of all time... The Atari 2600.

After all, the Colicovision was SOOO 1970's!

Line 010: create word bubble 'X 345 Y45' Line 020: write "Hello > Everybody" Line 030: undo lines 010 and 020 Line 040: create word bubble 'X 345 Y45' Line 050: write "Pipe PLZ!" Line 060: undo lines 040 and 050 Line 070: create pipe in lobby, color 'blue' Line 080: on button input, 'pipe to lobby' Line 090: sprite series 'player 1' enter lobby Line 100: create word bubble 'X 345 Y45' Line 110: write "Give me free stuff, lolz!" Line 120: 'player 1' "PK" 'player 2'

Now, some of you might think that making an RPG would be easy. There are dozens of "drag and drop" RPG game making programs out there today. Anyone with the time and patience can whip up their own RPG world in a matter of hours. Well, this was not the case back in the 80's. Back then, it was all done with hard core coding. The code you see to your left is from a typical PSO encounter...

As you can see, in the 80's it wasn't easy to create a game. However, Sonic Team worked day and night to create their game. After two weeks of work, they felt they had a product that would meet Atari's high standards. They packed their computers into one of their parents car, a Ford Escort (another reason they didn't get any action from the ladies), and headed out to Sunnyville, California.

At first, the suits at Atari were not sure about Sonic Teams ideas. The game they proposed involved tens of hundreds of dollars worth of investment. However, Atari finally came around, and pre-production work on Sonic Team's game started a few weeks later.

A month before release, Sonic Team met up to discuss a name for their new game. Several ideas floated around the table. Some names, like "Super Death 2002" and "Atari RPG" were kicked around for serious discussion. Other names, like "Chrono Fantasy 7," "Britney's Dance Beat," and "Halo" were proposed out of mear whimsy. In the end, Sonic Team wrote a bunch of names on scraps of paper and drew them out of a hat. The end result: Fantasy Star Online Extreme. The name was presented to Atari, who discared the "Extreme" label due to the public concept that 'extreme' titles are for video games about roller skating, snow boarding, and women in skimpy bikini's playing volleyball. Atari felt the gaming community was too sophisticated for those kinds of games.

The name was still not set in stone, however. By happy accident, the name was changed to the title we know and love today, "Phantasy Star Online" sometime during the early production runs. Some historians think this was a clever last minute marketing move by Sonic Team. However, the truth is computers back in the 80's didn't come with spell checks. The first batch of labels were mispelled with "Phantasy" instead of "Fantasy", and thus the new name stuck. Of course, this required some in-game reprograming, but back then that was cheaper to do than to reprint the lables.

While the new title was being programed into the game, the accessories needed to play PSO on the Atari were being produced. To enjoy the full PSO experience, gamers would have to invest in some extra equipment:

The Atari 2600 ASCII Keyboard The Atari Keyboard was created for use with PSO. At twenty-five pounds, it was light enough to sit in the players lap for hours of lobby animation fun.	The Atari Modem Small and compact in 1980's standards, the modem attachment would provide players with online action at a whopping 4.5k per hour.
The Atari Wavebird Controler The wireless controler was an optional accessory. For serious gamers only.	Atari Voice Interface For those gamers who wanted to use the optional voice chat features of PSO.

 

After a year of marketing and planning, Atari was ready to release Phantasy Star Online. Atari planned to release PSO, the keyboard, and modem as a package. For the low price of $299 players would be able enjoy the full PSO experience.

However, plans for a full release were pulled at the last minute. It seems that Atari and Sonic Team did some test marketing of PSO in Japan. The Japanese testers, along with the few scattered Americans who were privy to Atari's plans, were not happy with the proposed gaming network, to be titled "Atari Live". In an attempt to make even more money off the online gaming craze they were sure would follow the release of PSO, Atari wanted people to pay $50 dollars a year for the privilage to play online games on the system. PSO would also require a subscription to this service to play the game offline. Gamers on both sides of the Pacific agreed that you would have to be pretty stupid to sign up for such a service...