YouTuber single-handedly revives forgotten Xbox masterpiece

Favorite games are always an affair of the heart. One YouTuber cares so much about their favorite game that they’re now practically reviving it on their own.

Hamburg – Everyone who plays video games in some way usually has a favorite game. There’s almost always that one game that you want to tell everyone about, that you can always come back to. For YouTuber Nick Robinson, that kind of worship for a game doesn’t go far enough. He cares so much about his favorite game that he has now begun to revive its multiplayer game, which he thought was dead – practically single-handedly.

Phantom Dust: An unexpected lost masterpiece

What kind of game is this? In a 40-minute video, Nick Robinson recounts what he considers a forgotten masterpiece for the original Xbox. The game is called Phantom Dust and is a bit of an anomaly in itself. It was released in 2004 as the last game from Microsoft Game Studios Japan before the Japanese Microsoft studio was closed shortly afterwards.

Phantom Dust was only released in the US in 2005, but the game has never seen a release in Europe. Accordingly, the game sold pretty poorly at the time, and Microsoft itself didn’t make much promotional fanfare about it. So Phantom Dust was completely forgotten over time and for a long time hardly anyone knew about the game. Wrongly so, as it turned out.

Phantom Dust: A deck building brawler way ahead of its time

Why is the game so good? Basically, Phantom Dust is an arena action game in which two to four players compete against each other and hit each other in the face with various skills they pick up in the environment. But the extremely original trick is that each player has a deck of several skills that can be freely assembled, like in a Hearthstone-style card game. So basically, Phantom Dust is a cross between the Naruto brawler games and typical card games with customizable decks. This can result in extremely tactical battles that are also visually appealing.

Microsoft Game Studios Japan has worked a small miracle with Phantom Dust, conjuring up graphics that can easily keep up with games that were only released a console generation later. In general, fans always say that the game was way ahead of its time. In fact, since the release of Phantom Dust, a certain fan cult has developed that still stands up for the game today. This cult is no coincidence, even really big names in gaming have expressed their love for Phantom Dust.

What is this cult? In his video, Nick Robinson shows a few prominent voices openly professing Phantom Dust. Many of these are actual employees of Microsoft Game Studios who to this day wish their own company had given the game a bigger release. The best-known among them is the current boss of the Xbox division himself: Phil Spencer. Robinson quotes an interview he conducted with the Xbox boss in 2016, where the latter said the game was ahead of its time.

So now Nick Robinson has taken it upon himself to give Phantom Dust the audience it deserves once again today. The video itself plays a big part in this, generating over a million views since it was published in early June. He also hosts a weekly Discord event where Phantom Dust fans old and new meet to play games together. You just have to get the game – and that turns out to be easier than expected.

Phantom Dust: Still playable today – and it’s completely free

How to play Phantom Dust today? It’s one of the biggest surprises in Nick Robinson’s entire video when he reveals that you can get Phantom Dust absolutely free today on Xbox and PC. The game was released in 2017 in a remaster version with 4K support and is available directly in the Microsoft Store ready to download. So unlike many other lost masterpieces, anyone interested in Phantom Dust can download the game anytime and play it online via Xbox Live.

What does the future of Phantom Dust look like? In fact, Nick Robinson’s efforts seem to be paying off. The discord for the weekly Phantom Dust Happy Hour already has almost 5000 members who meet weekly to bang together. There is no exact data on the daily number of players, but Phantom Dust does seem to be on the rise. Good prospects that there will be more to see around the risen masterpiece in the future. The game’s director, Yukio Futatsugi, told Robinson that he would still like to develop a sequel to Phantom Dust.

Rubric list image: © YouTube(Nick Robinson)/Microsoft Game Studios (montage)