This is the real gift SEGA gave to the world.
I didn’t play BB when the official servers were live. I played on Dreamcast originally, starting with Phantasy Star Online and later Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2. Mostly offline, but got to play online with dial-up sometimes (which was awesome, because hacking was rampant and a lot of times people would hop into games and do a “rare dump” of tons of powerful hacked or duped items). Eventually switched over to Episode 1 & 2 on Gamecube. Probably put thousands of hours into the games growing up.
Much later as an adult I spent a decent amount of time playing Blue Burst on the private Schthack server with the friends I played PSO with growing up, which was a lot of fun. Really got more of the online experience that time around (and quest access is much better in the online version of the game).
Oh, and I also played Phantasy Star Universe for a bit on Xbox 360 in between, but it uh… Really sucked.
I also played PSO2 a bit off and on, and it’s not bad. Much more fun and faithful to PSO than PSU was, but still somehow lacking the magic of PSO. Haven’t tried New Genesis.
But yeah, PSO easily was THE game of my childhood. Amazing stuff.
I was so disappointed with Phantasy Star Universe. Side note; I don’t know if it’s a good game or I was just feening for more Phantasy Star but have you ever played Phantasy Star Zero on the DS?
Dreamcast was my first time going online at home, even before getting a pc, so I bought every online game I could and PSO was the best of them.
Mags and photons
I don’t remember Blue Burst but I remember setting up my Dreamcast to dial in to my ISP at the time, Demon Internet. Then loading up Phantasy Star Online. Probably the only MMO I really got into. I even purchased the official Dreamcast keyboard to use with it.
@B0NK3RS@lemmy.world has a section ID (Skyly) as their profile picture, so I suspect they’ve played this 🤣
I didn’t ever play Blue Burst, but I LOVED the first one on Dreamcast. It was my first MMO experience. I was 14 years old, and my parents had just bought me my own 19” CRT TV for my room.
I ran an Ethernet cable from the living room to my bedroom so I could play PSO online with my friend from school. We would play all night, and then geek out about our items the next day at school.
I played PSO so much! I bought a Dreamcast just for this game. Also played it in Xbox and PC, and private servers on PC. One of my favorite games ever. The soundtrack slaps too.
I’m always tempted to try private servers but never get around to it.
PSO is a crazy time sink. If you do a 2 hour play session then you’ve made approximately 0 progress in the game lol. I can’t imagine that being successful these days unfortunately, but it was amazing to get lost in the game as a teenager.
I guess it’s easy enough to leave the game open in the background on PC, not like it uses much power or RAM.
The music was phenomenal. I have a couple of songs from the OST on my phone
Was there a difference between this and PSO on the Dreamcast? That game was a masterpiece.
This was the PC version, it was after v2 which changed all the drop rates a lot. And it included episodes 1, 2, and 4. (Episode 3 was a completely different game lol)
I loved PSO 1 & 2 on the GameCube! I didn’t have the online connection but local play was awesome. Great times!
Same here - every friday rotating around a group of friend’s houses playing this, super smash, soul calibur, the bond fpses (agent under fire and nightfire) etc. Perfect!
Same, only played local but I got the game for something like $13 CAD.
I did have the internet connection module, but not for playing online.
I picked up both items in order to use Phoenix to play pirated game but ended up liking PSO.
I also bought this for playing pirates games. Never really tried the PSO game however which I regret now. I still got a TV I could play this on and I guess it is not too late.
Very good times.
Did you have the special controller through?
I haven’t thought about this beauty in a long time.
I too missed out, I played Phantasy Star Universe on the PC some years after it came out, the single player campaigns were still a lot of fun though but it was such a cool universe I’m sure online play was pretty rad.
I played a little PSO on Dreamcast but never got far; spotty dial-up made it difficult to enjoy online play. Still a console “MMO” was mind-blowing to me at the time, and it was a beautiful game. (Q3A became my primary addiction. Much easier to just connect, mindlessly frag for a few, and not be upset when someone inevitably picked up the phone and starting dialing without listening for the modem first.)
I’ve emulated Dreamcast PSO on my Steam Deck and I know private servers still exist for Dreamcast (and it can made to get back online with an RPi and a little fiddling) but is Blue Burst the preferred game these days? PC version? I’m tempted to give it a proper playthrough sometime.
The PC version with ephinea private server is the most popular way to play currently. Runs well on steam deck. I had to fiddle with settings a bit. Crashes on some resolutions. It’s still fun today.
Private servers exist on the PC version. I think eden server is still a fav but it might be a new popular server.
god staying up until 4am in uni posting pso 1 in 2000 was the best feeling ever
TTF anyone?
