Phantasy Star 4 on CD-ROM was going to be at least 240 megabits!

okay first of all, we all know the final version of Phantasy Star:
The End of the Millenium for the MegaDrive and Genesis, better
known as Phantasy Star IV, the one that was released, was a
24-meg cartridge game. that is, 24 megabits or 3 MegaBytes.


but most people have no idea that Sega had plans to put Phantasy Star 4
on CD-ROM, for the Mega-CD and Sega-CD, in addition to a cartridge
version.

the cartridge version was originally going to be 12 megabits, but the
CD-ROM version was going to 20 times the size of the cartridge version
-- that would've meant 240 megabits ( 30 MegaBytes) for the MegaCD and
SegaCD versions of Phantasy Star 4.

even though 240 Mb aka 30 MB does not even begin to tax the capacity of
the CD-ROM format, it would've still been 10 times more than the 24
megabit PSIV cartridge which Sega released. imagine all of the PSIV
content that we never got!

what a shame that original plan for Phantasy Star 4 was cancelled.


the sources for this are:
a SegaBase web article, and GamePro magazine July 1992, page 75


the GamePro source:
http://www.phantasy-star.net/cgi-bin...50000057F.html


the SegaBase source:
http://www.tinyurl.com/dz7ak


If I recall correctly, the Phantasy Star 4 that was released, on a 24
megabit Genesis cartridge, was later ported to the Sega Saturn on
CD-ROM for the Phantasy Star Collection, and maybe also for the IBM PC,
either on the Sega Smash Pack, or on some other PC CD-ROM release. but
these CD-ROM ports of PSIV were only of the 24-megabit Genesis
cartridge version, *not* the initially planned, massive CD-ROM version.

That's the best news I have ever heard!

Shit Times Ten Equals Shit.

great game.. oh well. i wouldn't mind a sequel to the actual series.

Someone start an online petition! That always works!!!!!

btw, the name of the original version on cartridge and CD-ROM was Phantasy Star IV: The Return of Alis.

the story and concept were very different from what we know as Phantasy Star IV The End of the Millenium

I seriously doubt that would have been 240mb of content. This was the days of FMV taking over the world, and I'm guessing we'd have seen a lot of voice acting and cinemas to eat up all that space. I'm willing to bet we didn't lose much of anything in the switch to pure cartrige format.

Can you imagine if they'd gone live-action for the FMV? I bet it would have been twice as good as the Phillips CD-i Zeldas, at least!

James

240mbit huh...

was it coming out as a $400 AES cartridge?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by cka

240mbit huh...

was it coming out as a $400 AES cartridge?

---

as I said in my original post, the cartridge version of PSIV, as of 1991-1992 was going to be 12 megabit, the CD-ROM version was going to be 20 times the size, according to the SegaBase web and GamePro magazine articles, which would have meant 240 megabits -- if not larger -- since CD-ROM can hold 4,000 to 6,000 megabits depending on the type of CD-ROM. TurboGrafx and SegaCDs could hold at least 4,000 megabits ( 500 MB) and there are no doubt SegaCD games that are larger than 240 megabits.

so, it is not the size of either unreleased version of PSIV that is so incredible, (12 megabit cart and 240 megabit CD) those were standard ROM sizes for their day -- it's the fact that the CD-ROM version of Phantasy Star IV was never released, and all of that content, from a huge Phantasy Star RPG game on CD, we will never get to experience.

obviously, somewhere along the line, after the original plans for cartridge and CD-ROM PSIV were scrapped, Sega made the 24-megabit Phantasy Star IV The End of the Millenium that we are all familar with.

Wow, I didn't know that (and I'm a HUGE Genesis/32x/Sega CD freak since 1990), interesting info. I have to say that extra space would have been for voice acting or bad cinemas, but I still would have loved it.