This article originally ran in Back Alley Games Issue 19, September 2025

Two groups of people are reading this right now. One thinks the title of this article is misspelled, and another recognizes the spelling and knows exactly where this is going.

To catch the first group up to speed, SUPER PHANTASY FIGHTERS is a platform fighter developed by solo dev Andrew-P using visual assets and lore from Phantasy Star Online 2 (Sega, 2012).

That technically makes it a fangame, but that label doesn’t fully cover everything SPF has going on under the hood. Andrew-P made all the code in the game from scratch, from controls to the camera to the hitboxes, which he said he had to program twice just to get them right.

He said that the game took a “very long time” to get to its current state; seven months from conception to first release.

“It took a while and sleepless nights to code everything from the ground up,” Andrew-P said. “Did I have a little bit of insomnia? Yes. Was it worth it? Oh yes.”

Part of the delay came from the fact that this is his first time developing a fighting game. The rest he chalked up to the complicated nature of the platform fighter genre.

SPF is certainly complex, with high-speed monster combat action and fighters tailored to every possible play style, from “unga-bunga” to “tryhard.” Andrew-P’s recommendation to players is that they “take their expectations of a fighting game and throw them out the window.”

That could be a daunting prospect for beginners, but Andrew-P kept that in mind during development. Beginning with a Tekken-like framework, he eventually simplified the gameplay to something more like the Super Smash Bros series in order to prioritize fun over mastery.

“A lot of game design-related things were made up on the fly, throwing ideas around with close friends as well as watching the ‘Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games’ series on YouTube,” he said.

From that series, Andrew-P learned to reframe his thinking to one that centers fun for both the player and the developer, and since then his “highest priority has been fun factor” when making games.

Besides SPF, most of Andrew-P’s development experience has been as a student, with previous projects PINBALL MASTER FLIPPER (AICA CCC-TEAM, 2023) and PROJECT ANKLEBREAKER (SMOKEWORKS ENT, 2023) made as part of his time at Columbia College Chicago.

He said some of those old projects were the “true initiation test” for his skills as a programmer.

“The experience working on [PROJECT ANKLEBREAKER] was extremely hellish, but it paid off in the end,” Andrew-P said. “I had to singlehandedly overhaul almost the entire codebase of the game.”

Because of the tight time constraints of capstone projects, his code for PROJECT ANKLEBREAKER had to be “haphazardly stapled” from a prototype he made of a “Phantasy Star Online 2 clone” and retrofitted to work for a multiplayer basketball game.

The idea for SPF’s all-monster roster is also from that same prototype.

“I made a very old, bare-bones prototype in 2023 of recreating Phantasy Star Online 2’s gameplay, an action RPG I really like,” Andrew-P said.

He continued: “When I proposed an idea to my professor about what kind of portfolio piece I should make, initially I was thinking of something like Tekken or Tobal 2 (Dream Factory, 1997) because of the sheer size of the rosters and the fact you could play as anything.”

Early on in SPF’s development, Andrew-P landed on the idea of importing monsters from Phantasy Star Online 2 because of his familiarity with the mod tools required and his ability to import them from Sega’s in-house engine to Unity “with ease.”

“A lot of attendees at CIGS were intrigued by my workflow on porting assets from one game to another,” he said. “Many thought I made the models and monster designs, but I showed them how I was able to use mod tools to extract, convert, and import them to an engine like Unity.”

At that point, the inspiration was still Tekken, but after feedback from early players, he changed his approach to another beloved fighter.

“After telling people what the premise is and showing footage of the initial program demo, I was actually suggested to make a game like Super Smash Bros due to the simplicity of its attacks,” he said. “I absolutely love Smash Bros, so I decided why not.”

Once he nailed down the roster and play style, the rest was just a programming grind. However, Andrew-P said that grind has paid off.

SPF has developed a small and devoted fanbase in Japanese Phantasy Star Online 2 fan circles, something that he finds interesting and exciting.

“In fact, Sega knows about the game’s existence too, and I can’t disclose any more details on how, but I can tell you that the PSO: NGS development team has played my game and expressed their support,” Andrew-P said.

With that as motivation and hopes to “knock down the door of the grimdark games industry with a huge BOOM,” it’s safe to say Andrew-P’s journey is just beginning.

Play SUPER PHANTASY FIGHTERS at https://andrewp-fun.itch.io/super-phantasy-fighters