GAMECUBE
My family used to get together at holiday parties for every major holiday every year. For these, we used to bring our consoles, games and controllers to all play random games together. It was almost always exclusively Nintendo games since they just completely dominated that market with games like Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart, Mario Party, etc etc.
For the Christmas party of 2002, one of my cousins was particularly excited. I remember he called me to make sure I could bring extra controllers, and he warned that this year we were going to play a new game that he knew I would love. Now keep in mind I was only 10 years old at this point, and was still rather fixated on Super Smash Bros. Melee which had only just been released the year before. I didn't share his anticipation to play this new game, because I really only wanted to play Melee with everyone.
Well, we'd arrived at the party and everyone was excited, a truly wonderful excitement and happiness that is, now that I think about it, quite rare as an adult. We set up the console in my other cousin's room (my aunt always hosted these large parties because she owned the largest house), and at first I resisted playing the new game and instead persuaded everyone to play Melee instead. We did for a while, but eventually the eagerness of playing the new game consumed everyone, so I gave in and decided it was time to try it out.
I remember being very skeptical. I just didn't think this game would be as mind blowing as my cousin made it seem. He handed me the case of the game, as he inserted the disc into the GameCube. I remember looking at the cover and thinking eh, it's just another one of those weird Japanese games like Final Fantasy (I'm not a fan of jrpgs in general). "Phantasy Star Online" yeesh. Why'd they have to spell Phantasy with PH? I just thought it was going to be lame.
After the several splash screens the game usually goes through on startup, I saw the future sci-fi theme they were going for, and that unique little Xylophone/beepy intro music. It intrigued me. We jumped into the character select and I was introduced to the character creation screen. There, I spent a few minutes actually wanting my character to look cool. I remember exactly what he looked like: it was a RAcast. As tall and wide as you could make him, all orange, with that head that looks like an inverted pickaxe. Yeah, a big, badass robot. I gave him a strange string of letters and numbers for a name that meant absolutely nothing, and we jumped into the game. 4 player local play. Goddamn.
My cousin taught all of us the basics, and we spent some time learning it, but wow was it fun. This game was actually fun. I was amazed. We completed Forest and I remember just being enthusiastically lost in this world, and the dragon... so cool! We reached Caves, but at this point I was SICK of the annoying stomping that plagues the RAcast footsteps. I dropped all my items, gave them to my cousin and I remade my character. This time a HUcast. Oh, so many awesome skins, so many orange choices. I made him tall, and named him XT7001. A name and character I'd continue to use far into the future, when I'd eventually buy my own copy of the game.
I was hooked, we played PSO for the rest of the night in that party. We broke away only to go eat with everyone, and then it was back to exploring Ragol. At one point, I remember one of my more strict uncles came in and saw us playing the game. He stood behind us for a while, just watching the game. When he noticed that the monsters we slayed left pools of blood behind as they mysteriously sunk into the ground, he immediately forced us to stop playing. He said the game was too violent and we should not be playing games like that. He literally stood there until we turned off the Gamecube and swapped out the disc with Super Smash Bros. We pretended to begin to play, but as soon as he walked out of the room, we couldn't have switched back to PSO any faster. Lmao, we were hooked.
Eventually I was able to convince my dad to buy me a copy of the game, which by the way, was fucking stupid hard to find. We had to go to so many different stores until I finally found it at a Toys R' Us (I loved this store as a kid). I made that same HUcast, XT7001, identical to the one I made on my cousin's memory card. I also made a FOmar, which I eventually grew to like more than the HUcast. I started my own adventure on Ragol and spent far too many hours of my childhood glued to that game. My memory card got corrupted saves 3 times in the total time I owned that game, so I never got any character past Lv. 99 in the game, but I did play it way too damn much.
I don't remember when exactly, but one day I was taking the game and my memory card to a friend's house to show him the game. I had the game on my lap in the car, and I was holding it firmly. I can't remember why, but for some reason I opened the car door while the car was in motion. Probably to spit my gum out or something, I'm not really sure. All I remember is when I opened that car door, the game was sucked from my lap, out onto the road, where I promptly watched it get run over by several cars in the side view mirror. I was devastated. Literally broken. That game was a rare game, beyond comprehension rare. I couldn't find it anywhere anymore. No one had it.
It wasn't until several weeks later, when I'd given up hope of finding it, that I decided to give eBay a shot. Back then, buying online was incredibly sketchy, at least for us it was. I think most people felt that way. It was the early 2000s and not many people bought online. I didn't know a single person, family or friend, that had ever purchased anything online. I took that chance though, because that was the only place I could find PSO. In fact, it was a brand new, sealed copy of PSO Ep 1 and 2 plus. A game I bought for $20, now worth hundreds. I can't even begin to describe the excitement I felt when I finally got it in the mail. I lost my fucking shit. I remember that day very clearly, lol. I was walking home from school. It was sunny, bright. I saw this large, yellow envelope peaking outside of our black mailbox next to the other black mailboxes of the 2 other families that lived in our 3 family house. I didn't know what it was, but it had my name on it. I went up to our door, third floor, and set my things down on the couch. I opened the envelope and saw it: a sealed, brand new copy of PSO Ep 1&2 plus. I treated that game with love like you have no idea. Godamn, I was a nerd.
BLUE BURST
I still played PSO on the Gamecube by 2007, but it had become a very, very small part of my daily game diet. I was about 15 years old by this time. I don't remember exactly how, but I found out that there was a version of PSO on the PC (likely through YouTube), almost exactly like the PSO for GC. In this year, 2007, I still had not owned my own computer. My dad had one in his house, but I lived with my mom and we never had one. I was staying with my dad for the summer though, and while there I found out about PSO Blue Burst. I didn't really understand what the situation was at the time with that game, I just knew that the only way I could play it myself was on this server called SCHTServ. I sort of understood it was some kind of personal, private server, but I really only cared to play it. Understanding the situation was not really relevant to me at the time. I created an account and downloaded the game's installer. I was skeptical it would work at all honestly, or that it would even be the same game I played on the Gamecube, but when it was finally running on that old Windows XP machine, I was amazed. I couldn't believe this game was on PC, and that you could play online, and for free!
I spent a lot of time playing PSO that summer on SCHTServ. I met some very interesting people, and learned so much about the game I never knew before. It was like rediscovering a new game all over again. My dad didn't like me hogging his PC all the time, so he bought me a used laptop from a guy who I'm pretty sure just stole it from someone else. It was a Dell Vostro 1000, and it had countless viruses on it and was basically just not in any form of usable condition. At least the laptop itself wasn't broken or scratched in any way. I taught myself how to clean install the operating system on it, and then I had to teach myself about how drivers worked, but after I figured it out, the laptop ran beautifully. I used it for a very long time, and mostly just to play PSO lol.
As many of us know though, SCHTServ went down the drain. I had eventually met and played with several of the admins there, including Crono114 and Lee. I thought of them as good people, but I think we are all only human. So despite all the things that happened behind the scenes there, I still enjoyed the game and the opportunity to play together in that community. In its prime, that server had over 300 people online daily. It was quite an experience for me, since it was my first time ever playing PSO online with other people. After so many years of time and trading in that game, I'm pretty sure I was one of the wealthiest on the server. I had trade lists and items up with some really stupid gear lol. I eventually sold my account to someone who offered me a dumb amount of money for it, and the year after that, the server was completely wiped.
By this point, I had almost completely lost my interest in PSO. I didn't play the Gamecube version at all anymore, and I didn't think I'd ever get to play online again, as I refused to keep playing on any of the other servers at the time. I tried them all, but they were all so different it bothered me. I knew that if I ever had the itch to play it, I could just use an emulator or play the Tethealla server I had set up for myself and some friends, but the drive was almost completely gone. It remained that way for a while, until Tofuman and Sodaboy decided to do something about this empty space we had. NDW and I were good friends on SCHTserv in its late years before its demise. He and I, along with another player named Aly, had started The Agency, the largest team on the server at that point. When Ephinea started to become more than just a rumor, we jumped on here.
NDW and I played for a bit here when everything was so new, we were all just babies. We tried convincing people to join us, but it was a weird time. I eventually just felt the fire die, and I didn't care to continue investing time into this game. It's a cycle for me, and I've been through this part before, where I completely lose interest in PSO for some time. NDW went on to transform The Agency into PSG, now the largest team here on Ephinea, and I just kind of faded away for a while to deal with real life. I'm not even sure what sparked my interest again, but something brought me back to PSO. So here I am now, again, ready to play the game for an undefined amount of time until I get bored of it once again.
I think we all go through something like that, probably some more than others, but at this point I also think everyone knows: You just don't quit PSO. For those that truly did stop, perhaps it's just that PSO quit them. Whatever it is, this game is a large part of who I am, no matter how much I don't like to admit that fact.
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