Tales of Phantasia

1995 · Action RPG · SNES

Overview

Tales of Phantasia (1995) is the first game in the Tales series, a Super Famicom RPG with real-time battles and a sung opening theme on a 48-megabit cartridge.

Deep Dive

Cress Albane sets out for revenge after his hometown is destroyed, and the trail leads to the antagonist Dhaos. Cress travels through time to recruit allies from the past. Battles use the real-time Linear Motion Battle System on a 2D plane, with the player controlling Cress directly while the other party members follow passive or active settings.

Developer Story

Eiji Kikuchi directed it at Wolf Team, with Yoshiharu Gotanda writing and programming, Kōsuke Fujishima designing the characters and Motoi Sakuraba and Shinji Tamura among the composers. Namco released it in Japan on 15 December 1995. The 1998 PlayStation version sold around 769,000 copies in Japan, and a Game Boy Advance version reached the West in 2006.

Did You Know?

It needed a 48-megabit cartridge to hold its voice clips and vocal opening theme.
The story grew from Yoshiharu Gotanda's unpublished novel Tale Phantasia.
Trouble during development led many staff to leave Wolf Team and form tri-Ace.