Two days ago I discovered that today was the 30th anniversary of the original Phantasy Star. In celebration, I impulsively decided to paint a miniature of the heroine of the original game – Alisa Landale.

Hmm… I'll have to do another #PhantasyStar inspired mini in honor of the anniversary…but what… Don't have the bits I need for the next two Dark Forces yet. Maybe I'll convert a swordswoman to resemble Alis.

— Kaihaku (@KingKaihaku) December 19, 2017

I searched through my store of unpainted miniatures and decided that Aviriel Tellerion, Female Elf was the best option to convert. I snipped off a bit of her shield, applied quite a lot of kneadatite, and primed with white gesso.

I gave her Laconian sword – known to future generations as the Elsydeon – a light blue undercoat. I also gave her hair a copper metallic undercoat after the primer dried. I filled out the base with air dry clay and painted it black. Then overcoats of lavender, copper for the shield, silver for the sword, metallic white for the boots, brown for the hair, and so on. I did mod on a white pouch…not sure that it was really needed.

This was a last minute speed paint for the anniversary and I definitely made some mistakes. The hair folding over the shield arm really threw me off, the details didn’t come through clear on the Bones model and I should have looked up the some photos of the pewter sculpt for guidance. I also could have done a lot more to smooth out her dress.

Per usual, I did dip the miniature in polyurethane and followed up with a matte spray on finish. I might go back and add gloss to some of the details – like the sword and gold etching. All in all, the quality of the end result isn’t great but it was a lot of fun to modify and paint. I don’t plan to do many specific characters…I like to make character miniatures unique…but, hey, Phantasy Star was turning thirty.

It’s my opinion that Alisa Landale is, hands down, the strongest female lead from any old school video game. The only real competition comes from Metroid’s Samus. Alisa is strong, competent, and driven. Her quest is started off by the political killing of her adopted brother… Alisa vows revenge and sets off to commit regicide. After a long journey, the original Phantasy Star ends with Alisa having overthrown the oppressive government, slain an elder evil from another dimension, and getting crowned as Queen of the star system. Alisa demonstrates that it’s not hard to write strong female leads (that aren’t Mary Sues), just treat them as characters rather than stereotypes. It’s a shame that the gaming industry still struggles with this thirty years later (to be fair, later Phantasy Star entries struggled with it as well).

In any case… Happy Anniversary Phantasy Star! The original “trilogy” of Phantasy Star, Phantasy Star 2, and Phantasy Star 4 established my favorite science fantasy setting – the Algo star system. No surprise, my Starfinder campaign will be borrowing a lot from it.