Ys (series)

 () is a series of action role-playing games developed by Nihon Falcom. The first game in the series, "", was released on the NEC PC-8801 in 1987. "Ys" games have also appeared on the Sharp X1, MSX2, FM-7, NEC PC-9801, Sharp X68000, Master System, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, Famicom, NES, Nintendo DS, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, TurboGrafx-CD, Apple IIGS, mobile phones, Super NES, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One. As of 2017, the series had sold over 4.8 million copies worldwide. Two anime series based on the events of the first two games aired in the early 1990s.
Common elements.
Plot.
The "Ys" series chronicles the adventures of Adol Christin, a young man with a zest for adventure and an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time. Gameplay usually revolves around Adol, though his comrade, Dogi, is a frequent companion in his travels.
A feature of the early "Ys" games is the Darm Tower. In the story, it is an unfinished and deserted tower, built with the intention of touching the sky. The tower houses a small annex, titled "the Tower of Rado" (or simply "Rado's Annex") three quarters of the way up. According to in-game lore, the normally immortal ancient Ys aged because humans overused the magic power of an ancient artifact, known as the Black Pearl. The result of this misuse was evil magical energy bringing forth millions of cruel demons. The people of Ys fled to the Palace of Solomon and used the Black Pearl to lift the palace into the sky, creating a safe haven. The demons, focused on controlling the Black Pearl for their own intentions, began building the Darm Tower, day and night, attempting to connect to the Palace of Solomon with their construction. As in-game-events transpired, however, the demons' efforts were thwarted. Later games feature a variety of plots but frequently begin with a shipwreck, with a stranded Adol getting involved in the new area's events.
Gameplay.
In early games, the player uses only the directional pad to fight. The player must run Adol into enemies, hitting them on the side, back or slightly off-center of the front. This was created with accessibility in mind; while other RPGs at the time had either turn-based combat or a manually activated sword, "Ys" had Adol automatically attack when walking into enemies. While most "Ys" titles do not use the 'bump attack' system, it has become one of the series' defining features. Falcom staff have compared this style of gameplay to the enjoyment of popping air bubble sheets, in the sense that it took the tedious task of level-grinding and turned it into something similar to a high-score-based arcade game.
A feature that has been used in nearly every "Ys" title is the recharging health
 mechanism, which had previously only been used in the "Hydlide" series. Recharging health has since become a common mechanism used in many video games today.
"Ys II" introduced magic spells to the series (e.g. shooting fireballs), and the ability to transform into a monster, which allows the player to both scare human non-player characters for unique dialogues, and interact with non-boss monsters.
"Ys III: Wanderers from Ys" adopted side-scrolling action-adventure gameplay, similar to Falcom's own "Dragon Slayer" series and Nintendo's "", with an attack button and a variety of different attacks.
"Ys IV: Mask of the Sun" returned to the original control scheme.
"Ys V: Kefin, the Lost City of Sand" uses a top-down viewpoint and requires the player to press buttons to attack or defend with a shield.
"Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim" graphically departed from its predecessors, using a mix of three-dimensional graphics and sprites. Gameplay is hack and slash generally without the ability to actively block. "Ys: The Oath in Felghana" and "Ys: Origin" share this gameplay style.
"Ys Seven" reintroduces the ability to actively block, introduces skills, introduces stun meters for enemies, introduces weapon types, introduces super combos known as EXTRA skills, and introduces the ability to parry hits from attacks with a flash guard system. Failed flash guards result in the player character taking extra damage compared to failing to defend at all. "Memories of Celceta" introduces a flash dodge where a player character dodges just before a hit. A successful flash dodge results in time slowing down for the enemy whose attack was just avoided. "Ys VIII" continued this style.
Games.
The "Ys" series has its roots in the Japanese computer system NEC PC-8801. Each of the first three games was released on that platform first. Ports of the games to console platforms have usually been handled by various other licensee companies, such as Hudson Soft, Tonkin House and Konami. In terms of the number of game releases, the "Ys" series is second only to "Final Fantasy" as the largest Eastern role-playing game franchise, as of 2011.
The first two games in the series were originally intended as a single game, but the creators Masaya Hashimoto and Tomoyoshi Miyazaki eventually decided to split it into two separate games: ' (1987) and ' (1988). They were later re-released together in the enhanced remake "Ys I & II" (1989). It was one of the first video games to use CD-ROM, which was utilized to provide enhanced graphics, animated cutscenes, a Red Book CD-DA soundtrack, and voice acting. Its English localization was also one of the first to use voice dubbing. The game received the Game of the Year award from "OMNI Magazine" in 1990, as well as many other awards. The Sharp X68000 remake of "Ys I" released in 1991 was notable for its early use of 3D pre-rendering for the boss sprites. An MS-DOS remake called "Ys II Special" was also released exclusively for the South Korean market in 1994; it was a mash-up of "Ys II" with the anime "Ys II: Castle in the Heavens" (1992) along with a large amount of new content.
After completing ' (1989), Hashimoto and Miyazaki left Nihon Falcom and founded Quintet. Two versions of the fourth game were released, and Falcom licensed both versions out: the Super Famicom version to Tonkin House (who had handled the Super NES port for "Ys III"), titled '; and the PC Engine CD version to Hudson Soft (who had ported all three previous games to that platform), titled "". Hudson Soft took certain liberties with the game, and as a result, it is very different from "Mask of the Sun". They share the same setting, cast, and much of the basic plot, but the actual structure of the story plays out in a completely different manner, as do the game's levels and enemies. "Mask of the Sun" is the official continuation of the series, while Falcom have deemed "The Dawn of Ys" to be essentially an "alternate universe" take on the events in Celceta. A PS2 remake of "Mask of the Sun" was released in May 2005, further subtitled "A New Theory".
Falcom released "Ys V" as a Super Famicom exclusive. A standalone title, it gave Adol a jump and manual attack. It was criticized as being too easy; in response to this, Falcom put out "Ys V Expert", a harder version of the game. A PS2 remake of "Ys V" by Taito was released 2006 in Japan.
After this, the series remained dormant for eight years (except for remakes such as "Ys Eternal"), during which time Falcom abandoned console development altogether, choosing instead to focus on the Microsoft Windows platform. They announced a new game in the series, entitled ", which was released on 27 September 2003. It was generally well received.
In early 2005, a new title in the series was announced, ", which is a top-to-bottom "re-imagining" of "Ys III", greatly expanding its original plot. It was released on 30 June 2005.
A spin-off game called "Ys Strategy" was released on 16 March 2006 in Japan for the Nintendo DS. Unlike the rest of the series, it is a real-time strategy game instead of an action RPG. It received lackluster reviews and general disdain from fans.
"Ys Origin" was released in December 2006. It takes place 700 years before the events of the first game, following the separation of Ys from Esteria. The two initial playable characters are Yunica Tovah and Hugo Fact. The two characters' stories play out somewhat differently during character interactions. Adol appears only as a hidden bonus character. Falcom has since released a new version of the game that required a copy's registration serial number sent to Falcom along with shipping charges to get an extra enhancement disc for the game. With this disc the player would be able to play as Adol, along with various other new features.
"Ys Seven" was released in Japan in 2009 for the PlayStation Portable. Unlike the previous entries in the series, this time the player has a party of characters fighting simultaneously against enemies on the field, and can change the controlled character on the fly with the press of a button. This system has been maintained in all subsequent games in the series. The graphics also had a significant upgrade compared to "Ys Origin".
In September 2012, ' was released for the PlayStation Vita. ' was released in Japan on 21 July 2016 for the PlayStation Vita, and was later ported to the PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, and Nintendo Switch. "" was released on the PlayStation 4 in Japan on September 26, 2019. It will be released in North America and Europe in 2021.
English releases.
Until 2005, only three "Ys" games were available in North America: ' (Master System, MS-DOS, Apple IIGS), "Ys I & II" (TurboGrafx CD), and ' (SNES, Genesis, TurboGrafx CD). The original PC-8801, PC-9801, X1 and MSX2 versions, as well as the Famicom ports remain exclusive to Japan. English ports of the Japanese PC game "Ys VI: Ark of Napishtim" were released by Konami in 2005 and 2006 for the PS2 and PSP, respectively, marking the first English release of the series in 13 years.
At one point, NEC Interchannel proposed bringing DigiCube's "Ys Eternal Story" to North America, but the idea was rejected by Sony Computer Entertainment America.
The original Windows PC remakes were "Ys Eternal" and "Ys II Eternal". Later, there was a compiled re-release called "Ys I & II Complete", which bumped up Ys Eternal's visuals to Ys II Eternal's level (more color depth, primarily) and made the soundtrack sound more cohesive between the two. Once this was out of print, Falcom began selling the two separately again, as "Ys I Complete" and "Ys II Complete". Falcom changed the "Eternal" to "Complete" on all external packaging and advertisements, but not in the actual games themselves. In one of the English patches, the internal bitmaps are edited to reflect the external change for the packages.
In 2002, Nicolas Livaditis, an avid Ys fan and software engineer, spearheaded an English fan translation project for the first PC remake, "Ys I Complete". This led to other projects for "Ys II Complete", ', ', ' and "Ys Origin", though not all were completed; the "Ys VI" project for example, was cancelled to respect Konami's licensing rights. Completed translation patches were made for "Ys I & II Complete" and "Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys". In 2010, Xseed Games purchased the fan-translated script for ' from Jeff Nussbaum, the actual translator, an act considered historic and unprecedented, as unlicensed translations are technically copyright infringements as unauthorized derivative works. XSEED went on to purchase three more fan-translated scripts for "Ys I", "Ys II", and "Ys Origin".
Nintendo added "Ys Book I & II" to the US Virtual Console on 25 August 2008, the first release of the "Ys" series on a 7th generation home console. Atlus released the games in one package entitled "Legacy of Ys: Books I & II" on 24 February 2009 on the Nintendo DS.
Xseed Games localized the PlayStation Portable games "Ys I & II Chronicles", "Ys: The Oath in Felghana", and "Ys Seven" in North America. As of 2011, all games have been released.
In 2012, Xseed Games began publishing Japanese PC games through Steam, starting with the PC version of "Ys: The Oath in Felghana" on 19 March. On 31 May, Xseed Games released an English version of "Ys Origin" on Steam. "Ys I & II" were also released via Steam on 14 February 2013 as "Ys I & II Chronicles+" - XSEED's Steam programmer Sara managed to combine Falcom's PC port of "Ys I & II Chronicles" with the earlier fan-favorite PC release "Ys I & II Complete", effectively mixing all the best features of both versions like selectable soundtracks (PC-88 original, Complete and Chronicles) and art styles from both Chronicles and Complete, alongside the visual flexibility of Complete, such as greater viewing area, togglable screen frame and support for windowed mode.
' was released in North America on 26 November 2013 by Xseed Games. The American release was also released as a very limited edition called "Silver Anniversary Edition", which features a 3-CD collection of both original and arranged music spanning the history of the franchise, a cloth map of the land of Celceta, a logo-emblazoned compass and Adol's Travel Journal, containing around 120+ pages of adventuring strategies and artwork. ' was also released in Europe on 21 February 2014, courtesy of NIS America.
MMORPG.
"Ys Online ~ The Call of Solum", developed by the South Korean game maker CJ Internet and taking place more than a hundred years after the main series, was launched on November 5, 2007 in South Korea, and in 2009 as an open beta for Chinese, Japanese and European players, but was discontinued in all regions by October 1, 2012.
Animation.
There are two separate OVA series of "Ys", with the first spanning seven episodes and covering the events of the first game, and the second running for four episodes and loosely covering the events of the second game. The first anime expands on the relatively thin storyline of "Ys I", including a retelling and expansion of the prologue found in the game's original Japanese manual.
Both series were released on DVD in English by Media Blasters' anime label "AnimeWorks", packaged both separately and in a three-disc box set. The dubbed/audio tracks have changes to some character names ("Dark Fact" becoming "Dark Factor", "Adol" becoming "Adle", and "Lilia" becoming "Lillian", for instance). Pronunciations of various names are inconsistent, sometimes within the same scene.
Included on one of the discs is what appears to be a preview for an anime based around "Ys IV". This was created by Falcom as a "pitch" trailer to shop around to various animation studios to see if anyone was interested in producing the series; however, they had no takers, so this trailer is all that exists of the rumored "Ys IV" anime.
Music.
The first two games were composed by Yuzo Koshiro, Mieko Ishikawa, and Hideya Nagata, whereas Mieko Ishikawa handled the soundtrack for "Ys III". The composers' works have been remixed for each subsequent release, for instance, by Japanese musician Ryo Yonemitsu for Hudson Soft's "Ys I & II", "Ys III: Wanderers from Ys" and "Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys" releases for TurboGrafx-CD. The TurboGrafx versions made use of Red Book audio.
The "Ys" series is seen in the video game music industry as some of the finest and most influential role-playing video game scores of all time, demonstrated by an extensive series of CD releases based on the series' music, with numerous variations on its themes. It has also inspired video game composers outside Japan, such as German musician Chris Huelsbeck.
The later games in the series were composed by Falcom Sound Team jdk, the collective name of Falcom's internal sound production staff (not to be confused with the jdk Band - a band made of freelance musicians who works for Falcom and performs Sound Team jdk's music for both arranged albums/soundtracks and live during concerts).