This made me smile!

Phantasy Star Online has such a special place in my heart because my wife and I used to play it together when we were first dating and didn't have time to drive to see one another after work/school. We'd meet up online in the world of PSO and mostly stand around chatting, much to the chagrin of our party members. Good times.

PSO was nothing but great memories. I peer pressured a bunch of my friends into getting it and we all had a blast with it.

I forgot about those unknown items you find. I forget a lot about that game.

So these unknown items you find, you have to decide whether to take them or not because you don't know what they are and you might not have space to carry things later on. Also you don't have the benefit of using the items until you return to town via a warp gate -- whatever those warps are called. And they cost money to get them checked. That's basically how they work, right?

I've got nothing this time.

Ignore the false TOLLMASTER's post above this one. Times have changed; he's an antique now.

Most remember Phantasy Star Online as the first console MMORPG. (Actually, most people don't remember it at all, but we can forgive them.) But PSO is also remembered for being one of the first games on the Dreamcast to tackle the issue of racism and sexism. Unfortunately, the Japanese missed this subtext entirely (being a mostly homogeneous nation) but it struck a chord with US audiences, who live in a social climate of constant racial tension.

If you remember, there were three different races to choose from in addition to three separate classes and genders, each variation making up a unique name for your choice (example: a male android Ranger was known as a RAcast; a female human Ranger was a RAmarl). This strict classism served to identify exactly what role each character would play in a party, and players felt naturally more at ease with players who shared at least one of their three traits than those who had nothing in common with them, whose strange abilities and spells make them seem threatening in a game with no friendly fire.

Even so, characters had to band together across class lines in order to make effective parties. And each class would evolve the virtual pet-esque MAGs differently, making communication between the races essential. (The MAG issue also had the added complexity of "Section IDs", randomly assigned, that served as analogues to real-life nationality or ethnicity.)

What does this all have to do with the comic? Simply put, the shopkeeper who identified your items was a major source of artificial racial tension. His cyborg mask makes it impossible to tell if he is Human or Newman, or if his robotic parts cause him to identify with the androids instead. And what class was he, anyway? In a game of segregation, he was an uncertainty. When assigning identifications for unknown items, the thought was always at the back of your mind that he identified with another race than yours, and that was why he was handing out super-rare items and you were stuck with Autoguns you can't even equip. Perhaps that RAcast got that Panzer Dragoon gun simply because of his metal skin, or that Force character was out-meleeing you because the shopkeeper had pointy ears beneath that mask. Persona is undoubtedly bringing this secret fear to light in this comic--the female android ranger in the background looks ominously at the female Newman, knowing that the shopkeeper will never willingly identify the item as a Heaven's Punisher. The shopkeeper knows who his people are.

I never played PSO so now I hate this.

Brandon, if you're played Diablo II then you've pretty much played PSO. Scrolls of Town Portal are Warp Pipes or something, and the rest is more or less the same.

I didn't play that either!