Phantasy Star II (Mega Drive)

Fighting alone
This curiosity about Phantasy Star II makes the game very hard to play. Perhaps even impossible, and probably you can only play it using Game Genie codes so you won’t get hurt in the battles. The adventure begins with Rolf and Nei.
Starting the game, you leave Paseo and soon you find the first city to be visited, Arima. After visiting Arima, Rolf goes back home and finds his first companion, Rudo. From that on, every time a new city is visited, a new friend shows up at Rolf’s to help. However, if you never visit Arima, Rudo will never visit you. Even if you visit all other cities, none of those characters will go to Rolf’s house. It means you are alone.
Further on the game, you get to Neifirst. A battle starts and your only companion, Nei, dies. From now on, Rolf goes on alone.
Of course, you will have a hard time fighting alone, and that’s why I recommend the Game Genie. You’ll fight Dark Force and Mother Brain alone.
And finally we get to the curiosity of the game, which in fact isn’t worth all this sacrifice if you can just read it here. As you know (if you have finished PS 2), at the end the party talks to the pilots of the spaceship Noah and Lutz sends the other companions which were at Rolf’s house to help.
But you were fighting alone so far, and those characters never got to know Rolf. Even so, suddenly they appear there to fight against the humans. What a crazy thing!
Dams
When you watch the opening of Phantasy Star II, you get an overview of a few of Mota’s places, and you see its dry rivers.
When you play, you get to Climatrol, where Neifirst is.
After defeating Neifirst, Climatrol releases all the water to the rivers, and Mota will be flooded. Rolf’s mission is to open all dams, and we know he succeeds (after a lot of work).
So the dams are opened and everything is fine with the water on Mota. You move on and then you get to the end of the game.
After watching the ending scenes, you decide to watch the opening of Phantasy Star II one more time, and how surprised you get when you see that Mota isn’t dry — the water is there running on all rivers and the dams are open! But that must be a bug in programming, they just forgot that detail on the opening. When you start the game, Mota is dry again.
Ghost group
Myei warned me about this curiosity, a very interesting one. You can have a ghost group in Phantasy Star 2. As you know, when a character dies, he/she no longer appears in the group as you walk around on the map. There are three ways to get a ghost group. The first way is having Shir as a member.
You can walk around and fight some enemies, letting all characters die, except Shir.
Then you’ll command only Shir.
As you know, if you keep entering stores, it comes a time when Shir disappears because she stole an item from the store. She’ll reappear at Rolf’s house in Paseo. However, the group now is only Shir. When she disappears, there’s no one else there.
You can still walk around on the map and talk to the people. The difference is that you don’t see any character, so it’s a bit difficult to guide the ghost group. You cannot enter Rolf’s house either, because he’s dead.
However, if you go out to fight, all characters will be dead and the game is over.
Another way to get a ghost group is fighting Neifirst. Before you face the enemy, let all characters in the group die, except Nei and somebody else, that must have a Moon Dew. After Neifirst kills Nei and the fight with the group (only one) begins, use the Moon Dew to bring Nei back to life and let Neifirst kill that other character. When the fight is over, you have another ghost group.
Rune Lai told me about another way. Going to Roron, one of the motavians that love garbage will give you a cake that takes energy when you eat it. If you keep eating the cake, everybody will die but still you will command a ghost group.
Dialog bug
Playing Phantasy Star II in english, at the entrance to Climatrol in the middle of the ocean, when you look at that spot on water, Rolf says only “The color of water around here certainly”. Then the phrase is truncated, leaving everyone curious to know what he was going to say.
However, on Phantasy Star released in Brazil, in portuguese, Rolf says the whole sentence, which is “The color of water around here certainly looks different. It seems like the water is coming from the bottom of the ocean.”
Peloquin told me about another bug like that, which happens after the group defeats Neifirst and Mota is flooding. All enemies turn into robots and everybody in cities usually speak the same phrases.
Everybody but this old man in Paseo. Due to some error in the game program, he starts to speak from the middle of a phrase that Lutz tells Rolf close to the end of the game.
Invisible passage
One of the coolest things in Phantasy Star I was the invisible passages. However there was none in Phantasy Star II… almost…
In Menobe, close to Aukba, there is this wall that you can walk through. However, it looks more like a bug, because (at least until now) this is the only place of the game where you can do that, and that actually isn’t much useful because the path to the stairway is near.
Taking the jet scooter to the dry lake
Our friend Yoz, always paying attention, has shown a curiously curiosity that you can also try by taking the whole party to the entrance of the Blue Dam with the jet scooter (it doesn't matter if the lake is still dry or full of water).
In this place there is a false block so you can get out of the jet scooter if you are facing upwards.
The party will end up in the region right above! You can walk arund and go back to the jet scooter ehenever you want. However, when the message saying that the party is going to embark, keep pressing the D-Pad to the left.
What happens is that the party ends up inside the Ble Dam. Instead of using the exit door, use Rolf's Hinas to get out.
Wow! Look where the jet scooter ended up! You cannot move it, but you can disembark.
Embark again through the left side and, when the message appears, keep pressing the D-Pad down. Thje party will enter the Blue Dam again. Use Hinas once more to get out.
Done! Now you find yourself in the central lake of Motavia. However, there are not many places to go.
And it's also not possible to disembark…
Youa re right beside the Climatrol, but it's not possible to enter the tower through here. What a pity! It would be nice to enter through here and face Nei 1 right afterwards. But you can disembark if you stay in the sides of the tower.
Rolf doesn't even know that that is the Climatrol.
Lutz’s sex
As you know, Sega of America changed some names when they translated the games from japanese to english. Lutz was named Noah in Phantasy Star I. That always caused discussions among the fans.
Another subject that also caused discussions (not that serious, though) is that Lutz’s gender was never specified, it means, you never know for sure if Lutz is a man or a woman, either in Phantasy Star I or Phantasy Star II.
At some point of Phantasy Star 2, you take Rolf to wake Lutz up from the criogenic sleep.
When Lutz wakes up, you see that he/she isn’t wearing a shirt!!!
If Lutz was indeed a woman, Rolf got to see a bit more than a cute face.
Game Genie
With Game Genie codes, some odd things may happen. For example, using the code to defeat enemies with only one strike.
With that, Nei defeats Neifirst.
But the guys from Sega were clever and foresaw that Nei could win the battle. What happens is that Nei dies anyway.
But the guys from Sega missed one. It happens when you open all dams.
Those robots appear to arrest the group, and the group fights them for a while. But if you activate Game Genie, you’ll defeat the robots before they can trap the group in plasma rings.
But then you’re not arrested and not sent to Gaira. You stay free, with all dams opened, and there’s nothing else to do.
Item cloning
Yoz has found another bug-style curiosity on PS 2. It’s about cloning an item. This is how you do it… At least one of your characters must have more than one item screen. And an empty space, also. On this example, we’ll use Anna.
Go to the character that has the item you want to clone. On this case, we’ll use Kain’s Laser Shot. Press button C over the item and you’ll see the menu for use, give or toss. Cancel that menu and go back to Anna’s items.
Put the cursor over the “Next” option and press buttons B and C at the same time. Notice that the use, give or toss menu will appear. Use option give and give the cloned item to any character.
Now Anna has a clone of the Laser Shot in her itens, and Kain still has the original one. That can be very useful to make money. Just go to a shop and sell the cloned item.
Hacking
The site Crude ASCII Maps: Phantasy Star II has some interesting data about the game program, like the values of every enemy, fight, item, etc. You probably noticed that every enemy (except the bosses) have 3 versions. All but Van and Aerotank. What happened to the third member of that family? Hacking the saved game, the author of that site discovered that it’s called Vanleadr. It’s there in the program, but it doesn’t appear anywhere.