The deities that be over at Team Sonic are working on our continued salvation in the form of Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2. It's not an all-out sequel (not yet, anyway), but more like an expansion kind of like Xmas NiGHTS or Samba 2K. But oh my sweet hedgehogs, what an expansion!

   First off, there will be two new areas, apparently based on a temple and spaceship. Level 100 juggernauts will suddenly find themselves at but the halfway mark as the maximum level will be kicked up to 200. To accomidate these super players, a new Ultimate difficulty setting will be added (blessed Virgin Mary, have they NO humanity?!).

   Any serious player will tell you that the true beauty of PSO lies in its cooperative play, but PSO Ver 2 aims to throw a whole new monkey into the works with the addition of three versus games: Battle (where players presumably beat the snot out of each other), Scavenger (your guess is as good as mine, but I bet it doesn't have to do with panties which is the first thing that came to my mind), and Capture the Flag.

   In addition, there will apparently be mini-games added to the lobby. The big name going around is "Lobby Soccer". Sounds fun, but I don't think it'll replace my favorite Lobby pasttime of squeezing girls' butts with ALT+F3...

   Character customization features will be further optimized, and expect a couple buttloads of new items and Mags. (How's a Dreamcast Mag strike you? Or if you're an old timer, maybe the Master System Mag is more up your alley. Me? Gimme my good ol' Genny any day!) Oh yeah, those irritating little glitches like the BSOD and the save bug will have been eliminated, and security against cheat devices will be tightened.

   SoA hasn't said anything about a US release yet, but I'll say it now: it's going to happen. I only work at one little store in one little backwater city, but we haven't been able to keep up with demand on PSO since it was released. The new greeting in town has changed from "Hi, my name is yaddayadda" to "What class are you?" With such a massive following developing this far out in the boonies, the nationwide PSO phenomenon has got to be nothing short of incredible.

   Well kids, that settles it. I'm going to drop out of school, quit my job, and sell everything I own except for the TV and my Dreamcast. See y'all on the streets.

   -- Green Gibbon!

Compiled and arranged by Jared "Green Gibbon!" Matte. Hosting provided by Emulation Zone and Emulation World.