If you want to view the credits, press the Left Trigger + North/Ⓨ/△ button at the title screen. You might play a familiar minigame… Press the SELECT button to pause, and Start to fast forward. Any face button to start shooting.

Hey everyone! Andrew-P here. You may or may not remember my previous smash hit PINBALL MASTER FLIPPER. Since its completion, and quite literally on the day after I graduated from school in May, I decided to keep that momentum going and make a fighting game. I’ve been having this idea for a while long before PINBALL MASTER FLIPPER finished its production. By the time we were nearing the end of Loop Central stage’s development, I proposed an idea to my professor about what kind of portfolio piece I should make. Initially, I was thinking of something between the likes of Virtua Fighter and Tobal, because of the sheer size of its roster and the fact you could play as anything, and the idea of having a roster of only monsters came from making a very old prototype in 2023 of recreating PSO2’s gameplay, which was short-lived before I ended up working on PROJECT ANKLEBREAKER.

When I started working on SUPER PHANTASY FIGHTERS, I knew that I could use PSO2 monsters thanks to various mod tools I had experience with, and being able to port them into Unity with ease. So I decided to proceed with that. For the actual gameplay, I was still thinking of making something traditional like Virtua Fighter, until I asked around what kind of fighting game I should make and after telling people what the premise is, I was actually suggested to make a game like Super Smash Bros. due to its simplicity and its something aimed towards beginners. I absolutely loved Smash Bros., and the attack animations of the monsters were fairly simple, so I decided why not?

This took a very, VERY long time to get the project into this state. It took approximately six months (May-November 2024 at the time of writing).

The biggest issues I faced were the following:

• Physics (still in a very rough state, even in this prototype)
• World -> Local space conversions (for modularity when it comes to level design, particularly cause everything that happens in the game is within an 'arena' prefab)
• Hitboxes (I re-did this mechanic twice from attached colliders on the body to actual static colliders that turn on/off for 1 frame)
• Animation. Root Motion gives me PTSD.
• Transitioning from Audio sound engines from Unity -> CRI ADX (I didn’t know till August that there was a forever free edition for indies, and I had some experience with modding sounds that use this particular sound engine, so I gave it a try) which helped me not only how to program audio, but how to do a bit of sound design, particularly realtime DSP effects.
• Controls. This royally bit me in the ass because when I made the script that handles controls I still wasn't sure if I was gonna make a Smash or VF style game. It is also the longest and ugliest script I have probably written, so when it comes to refactoring that one may take priority.
• Camera. Cinemachine is a really handy tool, but it took a while to get things like proper tracking done since the player transforms are offset, along with putting different camera colliders and confiners per stage.

Did I have a little bit of insomnia? Yes.

Was it worth it? Oh yes.

And let me tell you, I AM HAVING A F***ING BLAST MAKING THIS!!!!!! This brainchild passion project is a lot of fun so far as a solo developer and I am very excited to add more things to it! I’m talking about minigames, Challenge Mode (if you played PSO2 you’ll know what I mean), trophy collection, Lottery (scratches), and a story mode which I am drafting up documents as we speak. I was making the base game in preparation for content I will be implementing. At first, I thought this would get weird stares, but the Phantasy Star community, particularly the PSO2 modding subcommunity, was very supportive. Many PSO2-related fan projects I’ve seen are maps or characters ported to other games or VR Chat, but I haven’t seen a project so far that’s actually a fully-fledged prototype that’s past its pre-alpha stage. A PSO2-themed fighting game may or may not be an odd choice, but I definitely hope you will have a fun time playing as I did making it!

Also, for those who are wondering: No, I will not add PSO2 NPCs/characters in it. In a nutshell, it is very complicated and involves assembling many pieces.