Phantasy Star is coming to DS

A new Phantasy Star game is coming to DS, according to this week's Famitsu magazine.

It reports Sega will bring PS0 (or Phantasy Star Zero) to the handheld this winter in Japan. The magazine says that while the game is a completely new title, it will inherit a fair bit from its predecessors. It will also feature both a Story mode and a four-player multiplayer mode playable locally and over wi-fi.

One feature of multiplayer will be 'visual chat'. Instead of opting for voice chat, this allows players to communicate with one another by scrawling on a scratch pad on the DS touchscreen. You'll be able to draw or use symbols to communicate, and these will then appear over the other player's character in a bubble.

The bottom screen will also be used to display stats, a map and an action palette (less glamorously known as the 'move menu').

Various Phantasy Star characters old and new will appear in the game and going on screenshots from the magazine, they're represented in a more cartoony style than in previous games.

That's all the information that can be gleaned for now. You can expect more information to come from Sega over the coming months though.

Phantasy Star Portable on PSP was released in Japan at the end of July this year, selling over 217,000 copies in one day. With the size of the DS install base in Japan, we can only imagine there are going to be sale riots for PS0 when it comes out there later in the year.