This brought back a flood of wonderful memories. Tying up my parents phone line with the Dreamcast's 56k modem was a formative experience for me as a nerdy middle-schooler.

- The Dreamcast keyboard made communication so much better - I was studying French, and joined European servers sometimes for the thrill of using the language with real Francophones (VERY rudimentarily)

- I once met someone whose job was composing jingles and writing slogans for a greeting card company, which I found really fascinating for some reason, and I spent an hour peppering them with questions about it

- The lore of the "gladius spike", a supposedly really rare dual-saber weapon that never actually existed

- Being given a treasure trove of the rarest items in the game by a duper named "Cap'n PooBeard"; the drop rates were so ludicrously, absurdly low that I would never have seen some of this stuff otherwise (Chain Sawd, Spread Needle...)

- The fear and thrill of playing with strangers, due to the mechanic that you drop your weapon when you die, allowing others to steal it

- The vibey, synth-heavy soundtrack and diverse biomes

I haven't played it in decades, but I bet that it still holds up. :)

To clarify: Blue Burst was actually the PC port. [0] I put alot of time into that one, once an English patch became available on Schtserv. They made a bunch of the perks/models available to everyone that were previously only available to Sega employees and holidays. Running through the game with a trio of friends, all skinned as Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, is one of my treasured gaming memories.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantasy_Star_Online#Blue_Burs...

I spent so much time playing PSO on the DC. I'd start the night playing with Americans, then Europeans, then Japanese. When the Japanese guys started getting on I knew it was far past my bedtime. My whole sleep schedule was messed up from it, but that's ok, I had fun. I made a bunch of online friends and we'd chat on MSN messenger and the PSOtakus message board.

Uff Blue Burst, fantastic online game, it's one of those blasts of sheer nostalgia that is almost unbearable, I'd give everything to go back. It's partly the game, and partly my life around the time I was playing the game, a time of constant wonder and exploration and true excitement. There are times every few years that I just put the games' music album on a loop to relive the memories. Though just watching some gameplay is also fantastic with the sound and graphic design.

Phantasy Star Online was so far ahead of its time. I remember connecting it up to my early modem via phone jack.

Gameplay was amazing, story and graphics were great, the community was really fun.

Oddly it’s also the last MMO I ever really played. As I got into high school I focused more on music and whenever I would try a new MMO game they never felt nearly as good as PSO.

I still play PSO weekly online with a small guild of friends.