Thursday, April 12, 2012

Game 8: Ys: Book I & II (TG-CD) - Introduction

 
Game 8

Title: Ys: Book I &II
Year: 1989
Platform: TurboGrafx-CD
Developer: Nihon Falcom (Alfa System)
Publisher: Hudson Soft
Genre: Action-RPG
Exploration - Top-down
Combat - Real-time



Ys: Book 1 & 2 is a compilation of first two Ys games originally released in 1987 and 1988 in Japan. The two games were originally envisioned as a single game, so this compilation sees that come to fruition. Ys is a series that draws on Falcom's past experience with the Dragon Slayer series, and introduces a lot of the staples for action-RPG and action-adventure games for years to come.
The opening sequence is very random, but I know Adol is the main character
Having only played Ys III, I'm looking forward to playing through this one (or two) to see how the series started off. If only more in the series was released in the US. In my research while making the list I ran across a website dedicated to action-adventure-RPGs. XyZ is named after the three main series the website covers: Xak (released only in Japan), Ys, and Zelda. Since Ys is the only one in the series I expect to play (beyond Zelda II which already passed), I thought I'd mention it now. Unfortunately, the person who created the site seems to have given up on filling out the content (stopped at Xak).


I've been kind of lagging on the posts here, but hopefully things will settle down over the weekend for me to catch up. I still plan on playing tonight and Saturday though. Sorry for the short post here (and late), but I'm eager to get to playing more.

7 comments:

  1. Crontendo did a special feature on this game, since it has had so many versions of it on every platform under the sun, some vastly different then the original.

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  2. Curious, while I agree that this is the definitive version of the game to play. Didn't the SMS and Genesis versions come out in the Us before this one? Or does this follow the only playing one version of a game rule so you are just going to play the definitive version even if it wasn't released in the US first?

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    1. The main reason for this is that Ys II wasn't released in the US except on this compilation (or later ones). I didn't see a reason to play Ys I twice. I wasn't sure which release date to use though, so I went with the TG-CD date. As far as I know only Ys III was released on the Genesis.

      I think I did the same with the Evolution series: Evolution 1 (DC), Evolution 2 (DC), and Evolution Worlds (Game Cube); since the first game isn't fully included I'll be playing the first Evolution and then playing Evolution Worlds based on the Game Cube release date, but I won't be playing Evolution 2.

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    2. Ys IV (or, rather, the "official" version released for the Super Famicom) was planned for the Genesis/Mega Drive, but was eventually canned.

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  3. Ya it's kinda so a shame as it was released in 88 on the SMS. Or early 89. But was the first version in Us was the SMS version and it was really good. Ya I was confusing the Mega drive one With 3. The SMS one was one of the better games for the system and had great music. I would definitely still play the turbo cd one as it had advantage of CD music and cutscenes even thoug turbo CD didn't come out in North America until summer of 1990. (some sites erroneously say 1989 but I checked some old turbo play magazines scans and it came out summer of 1990 as a second wave of releases foe the recently released turbo cd add on.). Maybe you could still check out the SMS for comparisons sake for an hour or two.

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    1. Oh, that's interesting. I had read it was a pack-in with the Turbo-CD, so I just went with that release date since no one else seemed to have a good date for it.

      I'll put up a poll to see if I should play the SMS version for the blog, or just on my own. Of course, having gone through the game, I'd probably get through it in 2 - 3 hours.

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  4. Yes was a pack in with the turbo duo, the combined tg-16 CDROM , that came out in 1992. By that time it had been releases already for the turbo cd. Was reading the version they packed in with the turbo duo actually had different disc and box art and fixed some minor issues. Most people bought the turbo duo because th original separate turbo cd add on was rare and hard to find and was not even released in all parts of the country.

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