PSO --»BETA«-- Wanna Have it?

Well he's rich, expect him to be selfish. It's not about the enjoyment of the game for people like that, they'd rather have a copy sitting unused on a shelf to boost their ego than let everyone enjoy something rare and unique. Apparently he reads our forum, or did you blow it and tell him you were going to copy and distribute it?

Oh well, I told him that we would pay for it and then share it.
However he doesn't like the ideia it seems.

Sent him a message, telling that it would be shared only within the few guys who would donate for the beta. Still got no reply...let's wait and see.

This is a fairly typical concern of people who collect betas and prototypes. Not saying he speciffically collects those types of items, but in this case the betas in question obviously pertain to something he's passionate about collecting. I'm still skeptical that he'd actually be willing to part with what I believe to be the most valuable pieces in his PSO collection.

Mind you, we should be wary from here out, scamming is a real danger. If we're to continue to attempt to purchase these beyond this point then we need to request that he provide proof to back up what he's said about these betas. And, I strongly advise that thought be given on how the actual transaction will be handled should he accept any future offer. Purchase method (Ebay adivisable), payment method (Pay Pal or Personal Check advisable), shipping and packaging.

Ebay would give us some buyer protction, as would Pay Pal. A Personal Check would be traceable. As for packaging, the disc(s) should each be in a standard CD or DVD case with soft foam or bubble wrap in the case to prevent the disc from coming off of the mount, all that should be securely packaged in a box. The package should then be shipped insured for the full payment amount with a tracking number. At the astronomical price were liable to end up paying on a per disc basis (as if $150 wasn't astronomical enough!) this is not to much to ask of the potential seller.

Please also keep in mind that we still do not know the origins of these discs. We also have no clue, at this point at least, as to how much he may have payed to obtain them himself (if anything). Of the most concern to me personally is that I have not seen any picture proof to back up what he has claimed regarding the disc's content.

A possibility, one I'd personally prefer to not believe, is that his claims regarding the betas are fraudulent. In which case, this could split one of two ways:
1. He rejects any offers as a way to protect the lie. This could be disproven though if he would post some in-game pics and or video to back up his claims.
2. He accepts an offer by us, but fails to agree to whatever terms we set forth and to provide proof of what's on the disc(s).

What is interesting to me is that his response is not a definitive no. However, it's far from being a definitive willingness to sell.




Time to disect his response and add in commentary so that we're all on the same page, so to speak.

"I thought about it..."
He's actually entertaining the idea, a good thing for us.

..."and it would be foolish of me to sell only one of my V1s."
Uh-oh, <klaxons going off>, he's entertained the idea and has in his head upped the anty. This can be taken one of two ways; an absolute sign of greed or he's trying to blow us off.

"Since I have two, ..."
Ladies, gentlemen, and androids, here's the big hint at where he's going with this thought he's now entertaining.

"... if I sold one and it gets distributed everywhere, that significantly decreases the amount of the other one I have..."
Please take note of the keyword "if". While the rest of his sentence does hold a valid point from a collector's view, the presence of this word strongly indicates that this thought he's entertaing has turned into a game for him.

"... so I'm gonna hold out for now.."
By jove Watson! The game is afoot! Seriously, don't hold out hope on this folks. Remeber, this guy has already turned down a blind $150 cash offer for just one of those discs. What he's implying now is that we make an offer for both V1 beta discs. That implies he wants us to offer a minimum of $300 for both discs!


In conclusion of this evaluaton; this response paired with the data collected on the individual last night would imply that acquistion of one or both of these discs is a futile effort. There's a high probability that he's only playing with us just to see how much we might be willing to offer as a way to boost his own ego.

Well it seemed pretty clear that he would not sell it as soon as Treamcaster posted his response. Bottom line, it was foolish to mention that if he were to sell the disc, we would copy and release it for free. Never tell collectors things like that. >_>

Hope you guys don't be mad at me, I didn't think that someone would "be like this" to answer me like that.
Still no reply, and he logged on yesterday.

Seems his pissing on me.
We better waste money when we find the beta where caves monsters appear in forest and such....

Well, I contacted a contact, lol. My contact said regarding his collection that the Dreamcast lids with the PSO logos are somthing they'd seen before in Japan, but couldn't say one way or another if it was just stickers or an actual commerorative system released by SoJ.

And regarding the betas. Possible, but not likely. Sega kept a rather close guard on their own merchandise. Though, the fact that Propeller Arena was leaked is a rather hopeful sign that a few PSO betas could have "leaked" out of the developement studio.

So, is there any hope to find a beta(s)? You bet there is. The best place to monitor for these babies is not going to be eBay though. Yahoo! Japan: Auctions: Category 40,506 (Sega Dreamcast)
Let the monitoring commence!

Yeah, I am with ya Tweeg

If you guys ever find a beta, I'll be glad to put in some money to help buy it. Such a rarity should at least be played by some and not be left sitting on a shelf.

(I'd really be interested in seeing the different lobby, since I think that is in the beta where the cave monsters are in forest, etc)

I don't remember ever seeing a different lobby style. Do you have screens?

Sorry, I typed the wrong thing. I meant that I'd like to see the different styled Pioneer 2. I know that it looked different (or at least slightly different) in the betas.

You also gotta wonder what Sega was thinking in some of these photos;
http://www.phantasy-star.net/pso/psoscreens-1.html

The second page, by the way, is nothing terribly special. Just some people in the Forest and Caves (although something about the Caves' textures seem a bit off to me). The people in the Forest are fighting a Hildebear in what appears to be the second room based on the way they are positioned, so there are some fairly obvious reasons Sega removed that.

Anyways, here are the pics from the first page for those who don't want to bother going there anyways.


Seems a lot more detailed off in the distance. Maybe the Dreamcast couldn't hande it? XD But, if you look closely, you can see some of the billboards. The one near to the top right corner in a bright magenta color looks to read something like, "Collapse Harvest"? Anyone want to elaborate? The other two, a little left off of the middle, read D/F and A.B.C. Now, A.B.C. was likely Sega's laziness (>_>), but wonder what D/F stands for? Maybe Dark Falz invaded Pioneer 2 before we knew it? Anyways, I really like this Pioneer 2, seems a lot more like a city because of all of the buildings (and another platform and road underneath if you look close enough!), instead of our middle-of-nowhere esque Pioneer 2 now. Now we're just kinda floating in the middle of nowhere with the occasional space craft flying around. This just seemed more...vivacious, you know? That was what I liked about Cylez City from PSU, too. It actually felt like a city.

You get a better shot of that bright pink banner. Quality is so low you can't really read it though. You can also see the D/F banner. Nothing special, but it looks like Sega wanted the bubbles to look more cartoony. That obviously didn't work out because four of those could easily take up a large portion of the screen (heck, four of them already take up a big space on the screen now). What interests me is that building just starting on the left. It looks like you can access it, but what was it for?

Looks more like a war camp than a Forest. Look at all the spikes and flags! XD That, however, is a recognizable area of the current Forest, unlike the next one, which I'll touch on later. Looks like Sega was happy with Forest one and removed some of the decor. Makes you curious to what it was about, though. Maybe it was a camp left by Rico, or anyone for that matter? The story would have to be a bit different, but I think that would actually be kinda neat. Automatically leave a monomate there or something.

This is interesting. It doesn't appear to be am area from the current Forest, due to the very long road. Now, this is probably grasping, but the name of this is file is forest2, while the first one is forest1. Now, we know that area is from Forest 1, but what about this one? Was this the old Forest 2? Also, look at the path. It's dirt (with more spikes). Looks again like someone had been there before. Perhaps the "camp" theory isn't so far off...?

Meh. That's my take. Now I've gotta wait for Ives to randomly jump in and competely disprove all of my assumptions.

There's no way to "disprove" any assumptions; betas are betas. Since we don't have them, who knows what they were like or why Sega changed them. I would definitely agree that Pioneer 2 was toned down to reduce slowdown. Sega reduced the draw distance in Ver.2 because Ver.1 had too much and it caused problems. You can see the blood stains from anywhere in the room in Ver.1, for instance. The main problem with those old speech bubbles is they have no name caption on them, so you must rely totally on colour coding to know who's saying what.

(first post >.<)
just WHO is selling this? I will pay 250/300 dollars for this in a heartbeat.
no joke.
and I would DEFINATELY not share it with anyone. *wink wink*

furrypaws wrote:

What interests me is that building just starting on the left. It looks like you can access it, but what was it for?

Given where the people are sitting, I'd say that it's probably the teleporter to the Principal. Nice coloration. The reason we wouldn't be able to see those bilboards in the current Pioneer 2 is because there's a large set of signs with arrows on them in that same area (well, at least version 3+). If the PC torrent finishes downloading soon, I'll post a screenshot of where I think it is.