The official Japanese Xbox 360 PSU site has been updated with details on what we can expect to see on Friday, March 6, following maintenance. The Winter Mission Carnival will have come to a close with this update, but it won't be entirely gone, as two readjusted event missions will be released for players to enjoy.

• Explosive Duel (Holtes City GUARDIANS Branch) is a rebalanced version of Thunderburst Duel.
• High-speed Airboard (Dagora City GUARDIANS Branch) is a rebalanced version of Panther Blitz.

The official English site has not been updated with this information yet, and as such, the new mission names given above are tentative translations. This post will be updated once the official localizations are available. Feel free to join in the discussion of this update over at the forum!

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The North American release of Phantasy Star Portable is less than a week away. In celebration, a special launch event will be held in Phantasy Star Universe on March 6! Vivienne, a new lead story character of PSP, will be making appearances in Clyez City throughout the day. She needs your help to track down Helga Neumann, a suspected terrorist! Team up with your friends, locate Vivienne, and track down Helga using the clues given to you by your new partner. This event will run multiple times throughout the day, and after the event has concluded, all participants will be awarded with two special prizes! Below is a list of the times the event will be occurring on each server. Remember! The times listed are all PST, Friday, March 6! (If you need assistance converting from PST to your time zone, please reference this site.)

• 10:00a.m. - 11:00a.m. PST (PC/PS2)
• 11:00a.m. - 12:00p.m. PST (Xbox 360)
• 1:00p.m. - 2:00p.m. PST (PC/PS2)
• 2:00p.m. - 3:00p.m. PST (Xbox 360)
• 4:00p.m. - 5:00p.m. PST (PC/PS2)
• 5:00p.m. - 6:00p.m. PST (Xbox 360)

For complete details, please see the official announcement. Thanks to RubyEclipse for the heads up!

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In anticipation of next week's Phantasy Star Portable release, Sega of America was nice enough to provide PSO-World.com with exclusive screenshots of some of the awesome new weapons that will be appearing in the game! This collection includes three weapons from the Phantasy Star Online series, along with two brand new weapon designs! Scroll down to check out pictures and information for these weapons. Be sure to click on the thumbnails to see larger versions!

Demolition Comet	Elec Distortion
Type: Double Saber Description: A double blade that slashes enemies with countless photon blades. No one can escape its death blow.	Type: Saber Description: A single-handed blade used by a certain Guardian who loved music. Old fogeys don't appreciate a raging electric guitar.
Lavis Cannon	Skull Sorcerer
Type: Saber Description: A single-handed blade so rarely seen, it is shrouded in mystery. Its abilities are equally unknown.	Type: Rifle Description: A wicked rifle said to be possessed by the dead. Death will visit all who stand before it.
Twinkle Star
Type: Wand Description: A wand with star-shaped amplifiers at both ends. Its cute design makes it a popular accessory, too.

Many thanks goes to Sega of America and RubyEclipse for providing these screenshots. Remember to visit PSO-World.com for all the latest Phantasy Star Portable news! Feel free to discuss the new pics over in our Phantasy Star Portable forum.

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With the end of the Winter Mission Carnival fast approaching, talk of the next major event has been increasing steadily. To help get the ball rolling on this, SonicTeam are giving the Phantasy Star Universe community the opportunity to name this upcoming event! These are the four options:

• Dark Erosion
• Shred the Darkness
• Shadows of Gurhal
• Guardians of the Light

You can cast your vote over at the official forum. The winner will be announced on Monday, February 23!

Update: It's official. The name of the next major event will be Shred the Darkness!

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The update page for this week has been posted. Here are the changes coming this Friday:

• Removal of Winter lobbies
• Addition of Valentine's Day lobbies (available until March 12th)
• Addition of items to Crystal Central (available until February 26th)
• Rerelease of World of Illusion α with 11th stage added (available until February 26th)
• Rerelease of World of Illusion β with 11th stage added (available until February 26th)

The Winter Mission Carnival is scheduled to close by the end of this month, however certain missions will return afterwards to be made available permanently (albeit modified).

Update: The JP 360 update page has been posted. Also included in this update will be a Casino rotation (Goth -> Modern). The Valentine's Day lobbies are slated to run until March 12th.

Update: An extension has been announced for the Winter Mission Carnival. The last full day will now be March 5th.

Update: Notifications that players are receiving chances at rare missions are now displaying.

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An English version of the Phantasy Star Portable demo is now available at the Playstation Store! Players will be able to create a character, play through the first mission, and try out several missions in multi-mode. Also, a few PSP-exclusive weapons are available in the demo as rare drops. The demo is 272 MB and is rated E for everyone.

Credit goes to RisingSun for bringing us this news. You can share your impressions of the demo in this PSO-World forum thread.

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SonicTeam updated their website for Japan's upcoming AOTI supplemental update with further details on some previously announced features. Here's a brief synopsis of the recent additions.

• The capacity of the common box will be increased to 100 items from the current limit of 32.
• The item delivery function available at select NPC vendors will be replaced with direct access to your common box from the vendor.
• A function will be added to partner cards to allow players to transport directly to another player's room from their card.
• The current list of online status indicators will be replaced with the ability to create your own indicators. Furthermore, your current online status will appear on your partner card.
• The optional billing additions known previously as "PSU Tickets" are now known as "GUARDIANS Cash."
• All PS2 users will have access to the system file upgrades offered by this update, but they will not receive visual upgrades for new items. However, new items will be available to PS2 users. These items will simply use existing in-game visuals, though the names, descriptions and stats will be unique.

For further details on these recent additions as well as to voice your thoughts and opinions on this upcoming update for the Japanese PC/PS2 servers, check out this thread at the forum!

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According to GM Edward as well as the Japanese Xbox 360 site, there will be changes to the current event coming this Friday. These are as follows:

• Removal of World of Illusion α (will be available again on February 20th)
• Addition of World of Illusion β (available until February 26th)
• Addition of Thunderburst Duel (available until February 26th)
• Addition of Panther Blitz (available until February 26th)
• Addition of items to Crystal Central (available until February 26th)

There will also be a Casino rotation on this date (Berry/Sweet to Goth).

Discussion is taking place here.

Update: The English update page has been posted here.  You can find more details about the new missions on this page.

Update: Charged Puzzle has been updated with new areas.

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According to this official blog post, Phantasy Star Portable is slated to appear March 3rd in the United States.  This date has appeared recently on a number of online retail sites, however this is the first mention by Sega themselves that they've narrowed down the date.

A discussion post is already up in our forums.  There is just one month to go until release!

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A small bug which prevented the missions "Unsafe Passage" and "Fight for Food" from appearing correctly on certain universes was discovered on the PC/PS2 servers after coming back up from maintenance on January 23. In order to correct this problem, the two affected servers, Universe 1: Guide and Universe 2: Caelum, will be taken down for approximately one hour today, January 26, at 3:00p.m. PST. For the duration of this maintenance, those two servers will be inaccessible, but all others will remain online. The official announcement of this maintenance can be read here. Also, please remember that this maintenance has no effect on the Xbox 360 servers.

Update: Unfortunately, all PC/PS2 servers had to be taken down to fix the problem. However, all servers have since been restored and the affected missions work properly again.

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