Nostalgic Phantasian?

[Hoa Dao]

Hey, does anyone remember that site with the concept art for Tales of Phantasia?  Is it still around?  I can't find it. XD;;

edit: A few more seconds at some archive site and I found it. XD

http://members.at.infoseek.co.jp/retorono310/TOPPAGE.html

In case others want to see XD

edit: actually, are they fanart based on the sprites in the game or concept art? o.o???

edit: I. AM. CONFUSING MYSELF.  They're concept art, I think.

It certainly explains why the sprites are different from the official artwork. XDDD  Klarth especially.

[throughhim413]

It's the original concept art. The project was latter passed off to Fujishima who redesigned the characters. Depending on who you ask, you'll get varying intensities of that same story.

[Yetika]

Yeah, there's some neat stuff like Origin apparently being designed to be female early on, although I could be wrong since my understanding of the Japanese language is really poor (google translate and babelfish aren't being helpful, either). I know the current front page was a kiriban request from someone, but the page I mentioned earlier has been around for longer on the site and talks more about what's going on there. (Kiriban is one of those things where somebody got a milestone number on the "hit counter" for visits to the site, and the artist draws a picture they request after they send in the proof of it.)

[throughhim413]

It talks about how they originally discussed that since Origin is supposed to be the origin of all things, the spirit should definitely have a female base.

There's plenty of other information there, but most of it's just on the amusing side of things. The poor character designer was trying to get some kind of image to work with and kept getting these bizarre answers. That's gotta be a tough job.

[Yetika]

Ahh, that was the gist of what I could see in it; I wasn't sure because context is everything, after all. Sounds like the character designer was working with some really eccentric folks; I can really sympathise with 'em there because I've gone through the same thing. XD

[Kajitani-Eizan]

i kinda like some of the original designs. obviously part of it is that i spent all of my ToP SFC playthrough seeing cless's blue hakama thing or whatever he's wearing, only to have it changed suddenly for ToP PSX. also mint's fujishima outfit is kind of ridiculous looking.

[throughhim413]

Magical Nurse Pretty Minto!

[Cless]

I always wished I could read that site. And especially his little forum.

For some reason it's always left me with an impression that he's very bitter over the remakes and the direction the Tales series has taken in general.

[throughhim413]

I'd say he's probably understandably bitter. Didn't they hand all of his work off to Fujishima when he was almost done and then give him no credit for it? That's the story that I heard, though I've always questioned the accuracy.

[Kevassa]

Original Klarth looks... weird

[Datschge]

His BBS is a gold mine for inside information about Wolfteam/Telenet Japan/tri-Ace and Namco. I wish someone capable of doing Japanese interviews would do one with him (his name is Yoshiaki "Joshua ING" Inagaki, 稲垣 喜章) as he was there when Wolfteam broke apart, Telenet Japan was restructured and went looking for a publisher, tri-Ace was formed as well as when tri-Ace let go of their 2D staff.

[Kajitani-Eizan]

yeah i can totally understand his bitterness. i'd say ToP SFC in general gives off a very different feel than the direction the series went, from the art style to the battle system to the music to well, everything. i know cless will deride me for this statement, but i really did like the ToP SFC battle system. (other than short/long -- lol @ star ocean for keeping it all this time like a bunch of morons.)

personally, i'm bitter about how teleport got nerfed and isn't the crowning ultra ridiculous ultimate move it used to be.

[Hoa Dao]

There's plenty of other information there, but most of it's just on the amusing side of things. The poor character designer was trying to get some kind of image to work with and kept getting these bizarre answers. That's gotta be a tough job.

Bizarre answers?  What do you mean?

And the font used for the site is weird.  It's all these symbols and the computers at my school don't translate them. (I never actually understood why there are different codings ... ?)

Oh hey, I didn't realize that the text in the art descriptions are readable XD  I'll take a look at them later. =X

I rather like the orignal artwork.  Their original names are kind of silly now but I like the designs :3

So the artist isn't too happy with the direction the Tales series went?  I guess that's kind of easy to see =X  I always thought that Phantasia had a different feeling from the rest of the Tales games, though it could be because it's the first XD;;

I ran into a tri-Ace fan who doesn't like the current Tales teams because Namco took the series away from the team who reformed into tri-Ace, or something along that line.  Was the original tri-Ace mostly the original Phantasia team?  In the fan's view, the Tales series should have been rightfully tri-Ace's, I think ....

edit:  Teleport was awesome :[

[Craymel]

If that's true that explains why I really don't like the original top battle system that much. To tell the truth I've always liked the tales battle system over the star ocean ones. We'll see how that changes with so4 though.

[Kevassa]

ToP SNES has some different feel, as do every tales, really.
You cant put all the tales in a bag and say "they took that direction" as many of them have different feels, and different elements, which make them all unique games in my view.
Of course I cant debate too much as how you thought of the game (thus giving you a different gameplay feel), as it is nostalgia. Personally I played ToP SNES as my first tales, and I liked it a lot. Though I replayed it a bit last week, and I found it was horribly frustating to control Cless in battle, and characters were dry as hell in personality.
I never missed freely running so much  RUN DONT WALK DAMMIT

[Datschge]

And the font used for the site is weird.  It's all these symbols and the computers at my school don't translate them. (I never actually understood why there are different codings ... ?)

(To display languages like Japanese? Does your school computer not know Eastern Asian languages?)