Think: What was Nintendo's very first online third-party franchise? You may be thinking Tony Hawk, since American Sk8land launched with the DS' wifi service, but you'd be sadly mistaken.

You see, it all started with a GCN port of Sega's popular Phantasy Star Online series. While most Nintendo fans of those days just played by themselves or with up to four friends locally, it was an important step forward until Iwata pushed it back by saying "online isn't the future".

But now, for the first time since 2004's 1/2+, the Phantasy Star series is coming to a Nintendo system, this time the DS. Not much else has been confirmed, but we do know that, while this is part of the main canon and not the Online series, it will still feature four-player co-op over wifi, complete with "drawing chat".

This was announced by Famitsu earlier this week, and they were nice enough to provide us some pics.



Source: Kotaku