Ancient Web: Phantasy Star: Beyond Algo Kept Fanfiction Episodic in 1998

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

A late-1990s Phantasy Star fan apparently decided Sega's universe was not quite large enough. His solution was to write another serial inside it and give that serial a website.

Enter Phantasy Star: Beyond Algo.

The surviving splash page opens with a theatrical invitation to step into an unfamiliar world scarred by ancient wars. Click through to the main page and the project announces itself as an unofficial fanfiction serial about Dahl Mallos, director of the artificial planet Palm II, and her friends exploring the Algo star system.

The homepage credits its original material to an author using the name Neilast and gives an update time of December 4, 1999. Its counter text says it has tracked hits since November 23, 1998. Those are the site's own dates, but they provide convincing period context alongside the Y2K compliance badge displayed with a joke about the game's villain Mother Brain.

A fan novel with its own infrastructure

The page divides the project into STORY, INFO, THEORY, FORUM and OTHER. Those are ambitious categories for a piece of fan writing: the author intended not just to distribute chapters, but to provide background, organize speculation and invite feedback from other players.

The picture-based navigation includes character art, locations and dramatic scenery. A Phantasy Star Fanfic Awards link and a Phantasy Star WebRing link connect the serial to neighboring amateur writers. These small badges matter because early fan authors depended on one another for discovery, reviews and companionship.

The author openly asks visitors to send comments, questions and suggestions. That invitation makes the unfinished, collaborative quality of the project visible in a way a polished e-book rarely does.

Not every linked chapter or discussion space is reliably accessible now. The present copy also lives at a different host from some of its older links, so its survival should be distinguished from uninterrupted operation of every feature.

This is not official Sega lore. It is evidence that players were already making their own continuations, organizing them as serialized fiction and building communities around them long before modern fandom platforms made publication automatic.

Explore the original story homepage and its navigation.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.