The VC Advantage: Phantasy Spoiler II
My dad bought Phantasy Star II when it came out, and played it relentlessly. It wasn't until later that I picked up RPGs myself, but I loved watching and listening as he played along, consulting hintbooks and helping to draw maps. I especially loved listening to Phantasy Star II, whose MIDI music fit the brightly-colored sci-fi look of the game. When I saw this particular trick in a magazine, I was pretty excited about being able to help my dad do the impossible in the game. He had already passed the relevant section, as it turned out, so I never got to see it work. This little trick doesn't seem like such a big deal now, but it was a major glitch in 1990.
Even though Phantasy Star II is totally old, and thus seemingly fair game for spoilers, be warned that this VC Advantage is entirely concerned with the major spoiler of Phantasy Star II. If you don't want the story to be ruined, don't read this. If you're all about gameplay only, or if this is the second time through for you, then come on in!
The spoiler in question: Nei dies. Rolf's faithful companion from the beginning of the game, the lovable, innocent, purple-haired artificial life form Nei, gets killed by her "big sister," a prototype of herself known as Neifirst. This isn't like the normal deaths that will happen all the damn time in Phantasy Star II (seriously, all the time. The game is brutal. You'll die. Luckily the Clone Lab music is really nice.) This isn't a gameplay death. It's a narrative death, an Aeris death, and there's no coming back from it. Except there is, kind of!
It turns out that you can resurrect Nei temporarily during the battle. If your thief Shir has managed to grab a Moondew from a store, the character holding that item can use it to bring Nei back, even after she's supposed to be gone forever. This is not a permanent solution, of course. Either Neifirst will kill Nei again, or Nei will actually defeat Neifirst and then die after the battle in a touching cutscene. She says that Neifirst is a part of her and that Nei cannot live with the other dead.
There is actually another, somewhat more lasting way to "resurrect" Nei -- by killing her and everyone else. If Nei is the last person alive in your party when Neifirst is killed, the scripted death of Nei will leave you a "ghost party" of four dead people -- who can walk around through the game invisibly and talk to people. Unfortunately, as soon as another fight is triggered, the party's "death" is completed and it's game-over time, with Nei gone for good.
