You can't trust the internet anymore

Source: Hacker News

This is a “byte” post. It may not be as detailed as other posts.

I like things that are strange and a bit obscure. It’s a habit of mine, and a lot of this blog is to document things I haven’t heard of before, because I wanted to learn about them. I mean, jeez, I’m certainly not writing blog posts about strip or mahjong because the people demand it.

But I can’t stop seeing misinformation everywhere, and I have to say something. This post is just a rant.

Phantasy Star Fukkokuban

Phantasy Star Fukkokuban is a Japanese Sega Genesis release from 1994 that re‑issues the original Master System version of Phantasy Star to celebrate the launch of Phantasy Star IV.
The cartridge contains the Master System hardware, wired exactly like a Power Base Converter, so the game runs on a Genesis but only on models that can play Master System titles.

Why a Master System game in a Genesis cart?
The Master System never achieved strong sales in Japan, while Phantasy Star IV tied the series together and referenced the original title heavily. Re‑packaging the Master System version allowed Sega to market a nostalgic product without developing a new Genesis port.

Images

Phantasy Star Fukkokuban uses the original Phantasy Star box art on a Japanese Genesis cartridge shell.

Researching the release date

While drafting a blog post I searched for the release information. The top three results were:

1. GameFAQs – a long‑standing database of game data.
2. The Cutting Room Floor (TCRF) – a wiki dedicated to documenting lost and obscure game content.
3. Press Start Gaming – an article titled “Phantasy Star Fukkokuban: A Classic Reimagined.”

I tend to trust newer sites because I’ve read the TCRF page countless times and wanted a fresh perspective. The Press Start Gaming article claimed the cartridge featured “updated graphics and sound design,” describing:

“Phantasy Star Fukkokuban breathes new life into the classic with its updated graphics and sound design. The visual overhaul retains the charm of the original’s 8‑bit aesthetics while incorporating modern graphical techniques. Characters and environments are rendered with enhanced detail, vibrant colors, and fluid animations, creating a visually captivating experience. The art style honors the game’s roots, with character designs and enemy sprites redesigned to reflect contemporary standards while maintaining their recognizability. The environments are more detailed and dynamic, with weather effects and day‑night cycles adding to the immersion.”

Comparing the two title‑screen screenshots above makes it clear that the article’s description is inaccurate—Fukkokuban is simply the original Master System version, with no day‑night cycles or weather effects.

The article’s first line even read “Game data not found,” confirming that the supposed “remake” does not exist.

Takeaway

Phantasy Star Fukkokuban is an interesting hardware curiosity: a Master System game housed in a Genesis cartridge, playable only on Genesis models that support Master System titles. It offers no graphical enhancements over the original, despite some modern articles claiming otherwise.

If you’re looking for authentic Phantasy Star gameplay on a Genesis, this cartridge is the genuine way to experience the 1987 classic—just don’t expect any modern visual upgrades.

And That’s the Thing

Large language models are sometimes dismissed as “fancy autocorrect.”
That’s not entirely wrong: the core loop of an LLM is to predict the next token in a sequence.

Phantasy Star Fukkokuban is an obscure title that is likely under‑represented in the training data, but some related knowledge does exist:

• The model knows about Phantasy Star, a very popular game series.
• Fukkokuban (復刻版) means “reprint” or “facsimile edition.”

Because the model lacks sufficient factual data, it fabricates a plausible description of what a remake of Phantasy Star might be like. It may even pull in information about the actual remake, Phantasy Star Generation 1, and blend it with its own speculation.

My Test

I went to ChatGPT and asked:

Please describe the game “Phantasy Star Fukkokuban”. Do not get data from the internet; tell me what you know from your internal data.

The response I received was:

Phantasy Star Fukkokuban is not a brand‑new entry in the series, but a retro compilation release of the original Phantasy Star, created for the Sega Saturn era…

There was a retro compilation release of Phantasy Star for the Sega Saturn in Japan; it’s called Phantasy Star Collection. Indeed, the description of the game it continued from there isn’t too far off from that game’s version of Phantasy Star.

The answer is essentially a plausible‑sounding mash‑up of known facts (the Phantasy Star series, the Phantasy Star Collection for Sega Saturn) rather than a factual description of the obscure title.

Another Example

It isn’t just Phantasy Star Fukkokuban. In my post on Mahjong Daireikai I note that the game is so obscure that the only Japanese source I could find was a similarly speculative description: “this is plausibly what a game called ‘Mahjong Daireikai’ might be like.”

In reality, Mahjong Daireikai is quite different from what appears in the model’s training data, and that gap is exactly why people turn to niche websites for accurate information.

Is this the end

And here’s the thing—this blog post can’t do anything about it. I don’t know who Press Start Gaming is; the site’s footer says “© 2025 Cloud Gears Media”, which might be this marketing company (but it might not be—company names aren’t unique globally). Press Start Gaming is almost certainly a tool for making money off ads and sponsored posts, and articles like the Phantasy Star Fukkokuban misinformation exist mainly to give the site more credibility as a “real” website. If someone buys a copy of Fukkokuban expecting a new and improved Phantasy Star with better graphics and new side‑quests, what do they care? The article wasn’t really meant to provide information.

The trampling of the internet by SEO‑mongers predates AI, but what LLMs do is massively increase how easy it can be done—and they also hallucinate a ton. If a person were hired to write about Phantasy Star Fukkokuban for pennies, maybe they would have found the Sega Retro page or something and at least grabbed some facts. Now you don’t even need to do that. And no one making these decisions reads Nicole Express or cares about actually providing information on their sites. That’s not what they’re for.

Eventually models will do a better job integrating Nicole Express and will know more about Phantasy Star Fukkokuban. Is this the worst thing the AI boom is doing? No, it’s not even close. See, for example:

• AOL: NAACP threatens to sue Musk/XAI
• Yahoo: Groups threaten suit over XAI
• CNN: OpenAI ChatGPT teen‑suicide lawsuit (2025)
• Reuters: Americans fear AI permanently displacing workers (2025)

Even the fully automated hit piece against an open‑source developer is probably worse than this.

It’s a real shame. The commons of the internet are probably already lost, and while I might want to learn new things from fresh sites, I’ll have to stick to those with pre‑LLM reputations that I trust—at least until those sites burn their reputations to make a few extra pennies with AI, like Ars Technica seems to have (link goes to a Mastodon thread in lieu of a better source for now).

This post is just a rant. Thanks for listening, at least.