Tales of Phantasia

Tales of Phantasia (or sometimes Tales of Fantasia) (Japanese: ???? ?? ??????) is a Super Famicom game in the RPG genre created by Namco and released in 1995. It was later re-released or remade on various other gaming machines.

Related Topics:
Japanese - Super Famicom - RPG - Namco - 1995

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Tales of Phantasia launched the popular Tales RPG series which has since become the third most successful in Japan, after Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, although it has yet to rival those series in America.

Related Topics:
Tales RPG series - Dragon Quest - Final Fantasy

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Namco has deliberately kept this game Japan-only, believing that Namco of America would not make enough money off of the game to warrant its publishing. However, the Super Famicom (SFC) version of the game was unofficially translated not only into English, but also into French, Spanish, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Finnish (by various online translation groups under the supervision of DeJap Translations who made the English version). Not only has the game been fan translated, Gingo17 attempted to translate the actual in game speech. This project is titled "Vocals of Phantasia" and is at version .999.

Related Topics:
Unofficially translated - DeJap Translations

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Tales of Phantasia was developed by Wolf Team, written and programmed by Yoshiharu Gotanda, and scored by Motoi Sakuraba and Shinji Tamura. It was the first SFC game to be 48MBit in size and was also the first to feature streamed audio voices, made possible by sound programmer Hiroya Hatsushiba. Specifically, this sound engine was titled the "Flexible Voice Driver," and overcame the SNES's small audio memory capacity by swapping short vocal samples on the fly. The fan translators did not dub the voices, however.

Related Topics:
Wolf Team - Yoshiharu Gotanda - Scored - Motoi Sakuraba - Shinji Tamura - Hiroya Hatsushiba

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Tales of Phantasia was remade three years later for the Sony PlayStation (PSX). The remake was released only a few months after the sequel Tales of Destiny had been released. The remake runs on an enhanced Tales of Destiny engine and benefits from all the enhancements and refinements to the gameplay it had to offer. In addition, it gave birth to many new features still seen (and being improved upon) in modern Tales sequels today, such as cooking, titles, event voice-acting, voice-acted face skits, and the ability to control any party member (as well as take Cless, the hero, out of the fighting party). Many other changes such as adding a fully animated anime style opening sequence, new sidequests, new spells, a new summon, a new playable character, and a more generous battle encounter rate were also made.

Related Topics:
Remade - Sony PlayStation - Tales of Destiny - Engine - Anime

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In 2003, Tales of Phantasia was ported to Nintendo's Gameboy Advance handheld system. This version combines various elements from both the original SFC and PSX versions. The sprites and battle graphics were from the PSX version, while the opening credits sequence, map, and field graphics are from the SFC version. The GBA version features a handful of original additions and sidequests, and many, but not all of the additions made to the PSX version.

Related Topics:
Nintendo - Gameboy Advance

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Of the three versions released, long-time, hardcore Tales series fans generally consider the PlayStation remake of Tales of Phantasia to be the superior version, because of its enhancements.

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Tales of Phantasia is regarded as a classic gaming gem and an import classic by some RPG fans, because it is a quality game but is not well-known by average gamers since it was never released outside of Japan. It had some of the most impressive graphics ever produced on the SNES/SFC, a memorable soundtrack, and an innovative battle system (Linear Motion Battle System, a real time battle system similar to Street Fighter) that distinguished it from all other RPGs of the time.

Related Topics:
Import classic - Linear Motion Battle System - Street Fighter

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Tales of Phantasia also makes extensive references to Norse mythology, with many locations named after Scandinavian mythical locations (Midgard, Valhalla, etc) and gods (Thor, Fenrir, Heimdall, etc), weapons such as Odin's Gungnir, the Tree of Life Yggdrasil, and countless others.

Related Topics:
Norse mythology - Midgard - Valhalla - Thor - Fenrir - Heimdall - Odin - Gungnir - Yggdrasil

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Tales of Phantasia was released in the midst of what many gamers consider to be the Golden Age of RPGs. Other games of that era that were of comparable influence include Chrono Trigger, the original Star Ocean, Final Fantasy IV and VI, Terranigma, the SFC Dragon Quest games and the early Seiken Densetsu games . In particular, Star Ocean is often regarded a spiritual cousin to Tales of Phantasia. It was developed by tri-Ace, a company founded by members of Namco's original Wolf Team, who created Tales of Phantasia, as a result it employs many similar gameplay and battle traits found in the earlier game.

Related Topics:
Chrono Trigger - Star Ocean - Final Fantasy IV - VI - Terranigma - Dragon Quest - Seiken Densetsu - Tri-Ace - Wolf Team

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Tales of Phantasia is now also a 4 episode series of anime OVA, based off the game's plot.

Related Topics:
Anime - OVA

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While the storylines in most games in the main Tales RPG series series are not connected to each other (much like Final Fantasy), there is a considerable amount of strong evidence that the fifth game in the series, Tales of Symphonia is in fact connected to Tales of Phantasia, in the form of a prequel taking place thousands of years before the events of Phantasia. Despite these implications, its creators, Namco Japan have neither confirmed or denied a storyline connection between the two.

Related Topics:
Tales RPG series - Final Fantasy - Tales of Symphonia - Namco

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