UPDATE: The official Nostalgic Phantasian can now be found at a new website. Looks like they moved everything over to a new URL! Nevermind, it's down again.
For those not in the know, Tales of Phantasia is the first entry of Namco-Bandai's popular Tales of... games. Originally for the SNES, it has been remade numerous times, although the only official English was a GBA port with a...memorable localization job.
At any rate, as Tales of Phantasia was the first Tales game, it can be expected that things changed a lot during the process. The original team that worked on Tales of Phantasia, Wolf Team, left Namco due to conflicts. They would later go on to form tri-Ace. The source of conflicts, if the internet is to be believed, was the amount of changes that Namco insisted on making. The original concept art was disregarded, and Namco got Kosuke Fujishima to redesign the characters. It is Fujishima's redesigns that most Tales players are familiar with today.
Anyone who has played the SNES version has probably picked up the fact that the sprites don't match the official art for the characters at all. While Fujishima's character designs are easy to find, the original character designs aren't. The original designs were by Yoshiaki Inagaki, and it is those designs that the sprites of the SNES version were based on. At one point, you could access Nostalgic Phantasian to see the original art, as well as read notes about the first draft of Tales of Phantasia (If you could read Japanese, that is!). At the moment of writing, the site is down, lost forever to the rivers of time.
....Except this is the internet! Nothing ever truly goes away on the internet! Thanks to the Wayback Machine, I've recovered most of the files from the site. There are still pages and images missing, but the majority of information is still there.
If anyone has missing images/pages, or is willing to do translations, please let me know! Meanwhile, enjoy the unofficial backup of Nostalgic Phantasian.
Index/Top Page
Missing image
Color
Drawing of Cress, Chester, Arche, and Mint in their sprite clothing. Also, their original names are used instead of the ones we know and love.
Oyaji
Sketch of Klarth and...someone else. I can't read katakana (That is katakana, right?), sadly.
Element
Drawing of the Summon Spirits.
Yukari
Missing page. Page was probably about the singer of the SNES opening theme song.
Temple
Drawing of Mint/Temple, and some English. Hmmm, I see Fujishima's name there, but Mint/Temple's staff blocks some words. I think it's about Namco choosing Fujishima's designs over theirs.
Status
The SNES in-game character portraits.
Ponytail Wi(t)ch
Drawing of Arche/Merlin.
Original Origin
As it says. Bit of a surprise, isn't it?
Green Samoner (Summoner)
S-spelling. Drawing of Klarth, Mirald, and the Summon Spirits.
First Bill
Scan of the first advertisement? Back of the box? It's a scan of something, that's for sure.
Daughter of GreenGrocery
It's a drawing of Nancy! Aww, look at the little Elwin doll she's got attached to her pocket!
Onsen
Leads to this under construction page and a picture of Suzu cleaning. Was anything ever up for it?
Arch Bridge
Drawing of Mint/Temple, Cress/Masakinne, and Chester/Bowman on a bridge. I have no idea why the filename is what it is.
Martel the Dryad
Drawing of Martel, the party, and Gnome. A dryad, eh?
Solitary Etranger
I think they mistyped "stranger." Drawing of Martel and Dhaos.
Land Urchin & Alraune
Drawing of those enemies! With the plants on their heads! You know, those guys.
Little "Kunoichi"
Drawing of Suzu.
Suzu 02
Missing SUZU02 page. The photo is there, but not the notes.
Bigfoot
Missing the page. The photo is there, but not the notes.
Mint Details
In depth look at Mint/Temple's design and clothes. She's really cute! I kind of like her design more than Fujishima's.
Luna
Missing the page. The photo is there, but not the notes.
Shooter & Sister
Drawing of Cress/Masakinne, Chester/Bowman, and Ami before Totus is destroyed.
Lovely Parakeet
Jamil! Who possessed the Prince of Alvanista and hid as a parakeet.
Undine
A drawing of everyone's favorit Summon Spirit of Water.
Reunion | 2 | 3
Missing the page. Three drawings of a post-game reunion between Cress, Chester, Mint and Arche. Arche looks really good after 100 years! I wish the notes were still around.
Ruler of 4 Element(s)
Maxwell!
Element
Arche and Cress, doing battle.
