A while ago, before the first Phantasy Star House Party stream, VixyNyan asked in her Discord server if anyone could help her fill up one remaining area in her Creative Space in PSO2 New Genesis. Since I enjoy building and designing creative stuff like this, I decided to take the chance and told her I would think of something and build it soon so her Creative Space was ready before the stream happened. This had to be done quick since her CS would be featured in the stream.
So my plan was the following. I quickly thought up of something that could fill up the space she had empty and that would be fun for everyone to hang around in. It also had to be something that matched Vixy’s love for gaming. A gaming arcade with some interactive areas was the idea. The sketch below shows the original plans or design I was thinking of.
If you’ve visited the location, though, you’ll notice immediately the warps are completely missing. As it usually happens with these kind of things, time constraints forced me to cut plans. Additionally, the remaining build points weren’t gonna be enough to do it. At one point, I was even thinking of doing it a 2 floors building but that idea was cut almost immediately.
The first thing I decided to change was to make the inside garden a square shape instead of having diagonal walls. Considering the time I had to work on this project, I didn’t want to be fighting PSO2’s Creative Space system which usually only permits straight walls and no diagonals. For the set I was gonna use, only diagonal outside walls were available so I went with that.
The “VR Game” area was gonna be a warp that took you to some kind of race course that was gonna be located way above the map. It was the interactive area I was thinking of to have something actually playable in the location. The idea I had was to make it some kind of race in 2 player mode, either vs or cooperative. Unfortunately, once I saw that there wasn’t that much space left after building the first floor of the arcade and its surroundings, I decided to just drop that idea. I preferred filling up what I had already built than having to try to manage space between two locations. Besides that, I needed to make sure the work was done before the next day.
Another thing that was almost dropped immediately was the idea of putting a Kyogre as part of the decoration. Initially, my idea was to place it in a secret cave or some special area you get through with a different warp. Since time was short, I decided to just move Kyogre to be just a background decoration of the “VR Game”. But as I mentioned earlier, the whole “VR Game” section got scrapped so at the end there was no Kyogre at all. Besides, I would have probably not have had enough space considering that situation.
Now with the actual plans decided considering the space and time limitations, I moved on to actually just focusing on the arcade space. Vixy had suggested helping out filling the Creative Space with designs we had, which made me look around first. I collected several cool designs I found from different Creative Spaces. So I remembered I had a GameCube design and decided to add some variety to the location. On the east side, instead of having more arcades, I would place tables with GameCube consoles on it.
So then it was just a matter of filling it up and making sure everything looked extra nice. I also wanted to add some sort of decoration on top of the arcade but at the same time I was conflicted because I wanted to make sure the central garden was an open area. So I got a different idea instead: Add a Vixy sprite on the entrance of the building. Unfortunately that would have required more time and I wasn’t even sure if there was enough build parts space left to complete it. So that plan was dropped at that time.
I want to give special thanks to Gpsych for helping out in building out the “N Masters” Arcade Machine that I ended up saving as design to use in Vixy’s Arcade Zone and will also be used in the N Masters Alliance Space. Without his help, I don’t know how else I would have finished this project. I did have a different arcade cabinet design I had gotten from a different Creative Space but I wasn’t really satisfied with it. Gpsych’s design was much better in my opinion. Additionally, I also want to give special thanks to the ones who created the design of the GameCube, the pokeball, and the Met that I ended up using. I know the Met was something that was already set since a while ago but it did help the overall Creative Space.
Additionally, thanks to VixyNyan for giving me the chance to build something like this in her Creative Space. You can visit her location at Ship 1 with the following code: 1381-9094-9654 .
Finally, here’s other fun facts about the making of Vixy’s Arcade Zone:
You can also see part of the building process in the following Twitch highlight, starting at 48 minutes.
Much later, I returned to Vixy’s Creative Space to try out the idea I had about making and placing a sprite of Vixy. I tested and noticed there were enough build points left, so now the building is finally complete.
