Take a peep into an alternate reality where Sega's 8-bit home console developers were given the time and resources to explore a project to its conclusion and buff it up to a spit shine. Phantasy Star towers head and shoulders above everything released on the console to this point—and, frankly, it handily crushes about 95% of competing console releases from the era, too. A fully realized work that brings a new level of narrative sophistication and audio-visual fidelity to the role-playing genre, Phantasy Star sees the creative luminaries of the Master System development world collaborate on a great-looking take on the RPG with no actual flaws to speak of. About the only criticism you can level at Phantasy Star is that the balancing makes it a bit of a slog... but that's true of every RPG from the late ’80s, and has been tidily remedied with modern patches and remasters. It's one of the few 8-bit creations that truly holds up today.