|  Issue #26 - A Record Breaking Maximum Attack!
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During the time of 11th Janurary until February 10th 2003, Japanese players got their hands on the first ever competiton held on the Nintendo Gamecube versions of Phantasy Star Online, Episodes I & II. Held on Maximum Attack (Stage 2), hunters from left, right, and center went down to Ragol and soared through the levels of Episode II to clear the stage and earn as many points as possible within the time of 30 days.
If you're currently playing the English version of Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst, you'll know the rules and guidelines of this quest. The challenge is to get through the entire quest before the time runs out , killing as many of the enemies as possible on your way through (There are four different routes which will all need to be taken seperately if you're to ensure 100% kill rate by the end of the quest). 
Fighting through the levels of Episode II, including Temple BETA, SpaceShip BETA, Mountains, Seaside, and Jungle (North & East) aswell as the Central Control Area, get together with teams to kill kill kill until you cannot kill anymore! 
Once the quest has finished, your score is recorded and saved in the PSO databases, so that when you play the quest through again, that score then also gets saved, and then gets added together with your current existing score for that character. The main attraction with this quest is to see how high the kill count will rise with a combination effort of everyone's kills added together! What was the point of doing such a task if there is no reward? Well there were rewards my friends, super ultra mega prizes in fact!! There are prizes for people who reached certain milestones. If you were one of the people who got a milestone (Milestone = 1000th enemy killer) within the first 10million points, then you stood a chance of winning the 10million point prize, and so forth with every other 10million points milestone until the 90th-million milestone! All people entered within that particular milestone were put into one big hat and winners were drawn per milestone sets after the end date. You want to know what the prizes are? You may not believe what i'm about to say... - 10Million Points Milestone
- Specially made memo 'mosquito seal 1' - 100 chances to win (Whatever that is!)
- 20Million Points Milestone
- Specially made 'memo mosquito seal 2' - 100 chances to win
- 30Million Points Milestone
- PSO Figurine - 50 chances to win
- 40Million Points Milestone
- Specially made Key Straps - 50 Chances to win
- 50Million Points Milestone
- PSO Official Nintendo Gamecube Memory Card 59 (20 Chances to win)
- 60Million Points Milestone
- Some sort of PSO Sewing related prize! - 10 Chances to win
- 70Million Points Milestone
- Official Nintendo Gamecube Wavebird Controller - 5 Chances to win
- 80Million Points Milestone
- Nintendo GameBoy Advance SP (Various Colours) & GBA-Gamecube Link Lead (To use to download the PSO Quests!) - 5 Chances to win
- 90Million Points Milestone
- 5Gb Windows compatable Apple iPod (Able to store 1,000 tunes!) - 2 Chances to win
This special quest was added to the event in 2 periods! The first time it made its appearance was during the 'opening period' of the Maximum Attack 3rd Cup between Janurary 17th and Janurary 20th 2003. Players could go into the quest and visit the 'special route through the seaside level of Episode II and chat to the 'Priest' Rappy! 
What does he do? Well when 2 players of different sex go along to speak to the rappy at the sametime, Rappy will engage you and your two names will appear on the Japanese PSO Minhiro website's Maximum Attack 'Couples List'! No doubt allowing you to travel through PSO together until only a few months later when Japanese White Day commences and you can get married for real! (Well, remember it's only a game people!). The second time the quest was added in-game was during Janurary 31st and February 3rd when yet another secret route was opened within Episode II's Seaside stage. However the point of the quest this time was a bit different. For when Maximum Attack reached over it's first one million kills, something special is made available to all the players involved. To retrieve it though, you've got to play a button mashing game with Rappy! 
When you meet the rappy, he'll challenge you to a button mashing game where you have to tap the 'A' button as fast as you can within the allotted time. If you win, you get a special prize! By February 10th 2003, the grand total of kills was 151,153,409 (Far topping the 2nd Maximum Attack's total which was under 100million - 92,765,971 to be exact!). This chart shows off exactly how the final few days of the competition faired altogether: 
As you can see, by the very end, the total amount of kills just topped over the 150million mark! Because of this massive result, new features were opened up in the 'one day only' special version of the quest 'If you sing, at the seashore'. The developers of the game who watched the kill count rise amazingly fast even decided to bump up another special prize if the entrants got the total to over 200millions, but unfortunately we'll never know what that particular one-off prize would have been! However, they did join in the special celebrations online within the game by joining the online game lobbies on the 'If you sing, at the seashore' party! Seems to good a competition to believe eh? Partying in-game with the developers of PSO from Sonic Team? Now that's something. Time for some extra fun facts to see just how the competiton faired: Character Types Averages: - FOmarl - 266.1 points
- FOmar - 262 points
- FOnewearl - 261.4 points
- RAcast - 255.1 points
- FOnewm - 254.2 points
- RAcaseal - 253 points
- HUmar - 251.3 points
- RAmar - 250.4 points
- HUcast - 243.2 points
- RAmarl - 242.8 points
- HUnewearl - 241.9 points
- HUcaseal - 241.4 points
Total Rankings - The Top Characters:   
- 1st - HUnewearl - 15.14%
- 2nd - HUmar - 13.69%
- 3rd - RAmarl - 12.67%
15638921 points were collected from the button mashing rappy game in the total space of just 4 days! Over 3,000 people got together according to Sonic Team of Japan's records from the 'Couples List' Of the couples who got together, 33% of their partners Guild Cards can be found in the very first Guild Card slot, while 35% of their partners Guild Cards can be found on the first page of their Guild Card listings! Of the couples that got together, 29.4% of them search for their partner by Guild Card every 5 minutes! 
The event was well advertised in lobbies by 3 similarily dressed and looking girls (Named Cheer, Ger, and Lu!) between the dates of December 1st and December 29th 2002, chatting to people in the lobbies and generally passing on word that Sonic Team had plans to make this the biggest PSO competition EVER! After it all ended, Sonic Team announced it was the biggest competiton result they had ever had the pleasure to witness! Not only had the amount of participation been record breaking as far as online games had been at that particular time for console gaming, but their archives even mention an entry into the Guinness Book of Records! Quite a spectacular event i think you'll agree, and definately one of the biggest competitions you'd ever have loved to have been a part of! Unfortunately as you know by now, we're talking Japanese here. So while Sonic Team of Japan hands out prizes you can feel, we'll just have to make do with wallpapers and other 'downloadables' as our rewards... and Sonic Team of America wonder why the current Maximum Attack challenge in the English version of PSO: Blue Burst is suddenly declining aswell as PSO activity altogether... Oh well, what can you do eh? Let's all move to Japan! If you'd like to comment on this editions main article, then do it in our forums, in this particular Ragol.co.uk Forum Thread! Share your point of view with the world! Do you agree, dont you agree, DO post on our forums!  Chao was busy with Maximum Attack this week, so he hasn't had much time to look over eBay for some good Phantsy Star memorabilia. He tells me there isn't much online at the moment, so i suppose we'll just have to take his word for it...  Not much this time around i'm afraid - I have been forsaken by Chao this week - That's a bad chao! However if you're interested - click on the item! All prices were correct as of September 8th 2005 (Evening BST)
Chao, for now!  | | The Ragol.co.uk Hunters Gazette |
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Credits September 9th 2005 Hunters Gazette Edition by: Lee-yoshi
Images: Lee-yoshi (Especially Recognising Sonic Team & SEGA of Japan)
© Ragol .co.uk |
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