This was another great overview! I'm a relatively new Falcom fans and have never finished Ys II. I bought Ys Books I & II on the Wii's Virtual Console back in the day but only finished Ys I. Someday I'll either finish that version or finally play my copy Chronicles I purchased years ago. Also, fun piece of trivia, Ys II's opening has been recreated by some pretty famous people in the anime industry over the years. The Ys II Eternal opening was created by Makoto Shinkai back when he work at Falcom and the Saturn's opening was produced by Kyoto Animation back when they were just an outsource studio.
Definitely finish one of those versions (or both!). You'll have a blast! Thanks for more interesting facts about the opening. That makes even more evidence for how culturally important a game opening it really is!
The hidden doors in Rasteenie will actually show up if you use the light magic, there are glowing stones nest to each door that respond to the magic. So while it isn't needed the game does give you a way to find them outside of trial and error.
Nice, I love how early Japanese computers accomplished really good graphics with a limited palette, no integrated scrolling and relatively low resolution, and Ys II is no exception. It also saddens me that the art of making really interesting and nice looking Game Manuals is effectively lost now a days, people just take for granted having access to guides this easily now a days.
10:45 I feel like getting lost on the Shrine of Salmon is like a rite of passage rofl Even with the gamesfaq guide I got sooooo lost on my second playthru of the Chronicles Collection
YS Book I & II for PC Engine CD is the ULTIMATE version of this game. Anyone who calls themselves a gamer MUST play that version at least once in their lifetime.
thanks for that little tidbit about that unused track I have all the special boxes and am still discovering new gems from them. 91 specifically is the one I slept on but am now gaining some appreciation for what's on the discs.
Discs 2 and 3 of Special Box '91 are especially interesting to me since they contain "Falcom Unknown Music" which is a bunch of unused or otherwise seldom heard tracks. Another personal favorite is disc 3 of Special Box '95 as it contains the remainder of Ys IV JDK special that they couldn't fit on the standalone disc.
Starting things out with "Tender People". Oh my god! That is probably the best video game 'town music ' I've ever heard in my life. I think it's a masterpiece! I'd comment on the rest of the video but I'm just now starting to watch it. I'm sure it will be great, though. I've really enjoyed this series!
I found this channel because I was interested where many PC Engine games originally came from. I'm happy the PC Engine is home to so many great ports of games that didn't see near the same level of succes on other consoles and I'm also pleasantly surprised how well the original versions of those games hold up. On a side note I just saw Spaceballs yesterday.
Great video. The tunes are amazing on the PC 8801 ,they had a Sega Mega Drive feel but more unique. Finished Ys I and Ys III with a PC8801 emulator on my PSP ,played a lot of Ys II but I am stuck in the ice ridge of Noltia. Imagine playing this game in 1988,the opening was mindblowing. I also finished the PC Engine versions of Ys I-II-III and the PSP/PC remakes.
Arguably better because the sound chip was basically like a YM2151 which was used in many arcade boards by Sega and many other companies in the mid 80s-ewrly 90s. The YM2612 used in the Megadrive/Genesis was a stripped down version of the YM2151
My first exposure to the series was Ys 1 on the Master system back in 1991 and became since then a religius Falcom fan, but never had the original japanese releases, so this is gold to a person like me.
Thanks for walking us through the game! It was cool to hear the shoutout to Goodbye/Sayonara Adol, which is perhaps in my Top 3 Falcom songs despite being unused! Great video. Watched it with my dog and she also liked it. Have a good day!
Great video. Just like when I first played it on the TG-16 CD, I would have been totally floored by the intro on this system! They definitely upped my expectations for opening scenes in future games. Ys Book I & II is only topped by the original Legend of Zelda as my favorite game.
I've only played this on the version for Steam. As a Master System owner who owns YS 1 I'm still bummed that this one never got a Master System release.
That was probably due to the fact that the Master System was discontinued in Japan at the timeframe a Master System version of Ys II should have been released, hence why it was probably never considered. Sega could have still bothered with one for North America (which was still receiving Master System games, even though was already in its way out too) and especially Europe, like for example what was done with Ultima IV, but I suppose they didn't see it fit. What's even more odd is that Sega wouldn't bother with a Mega Drive version either. Instead, they opted to do a Mega Drive version of Sorcerian.
This is truly an impressive game for when it was released and this video overview shows how impressive it is. My personal favorite version of this game is the remake you mentioned in this video on Steam and PSP. I loved how in the remake every character had their own sprite, dialogue, and even a character entry that expanded on that character even more. Heck in Ys II on Steam it even had a friendship mechanic where if you blasted somebody with a fireball they would dislike you more, but if you gave them ether an apple or flower they would like you more and they had over half a dozen bits of dialogue for you depending on how much they liked/disliked you. Their dialogue also changed depending on the events in the story as well.
"To Make the End of Battle" is my favorite Ys track. Even before I knew what Ys was, I had an Amiga mod music file of the song I used to jam out to all the time. The version of the song in the Chronicles Collection for PSP is extraordinary, along with the FMV cutscene that goes with it, but it is cool to see where it all began :)
Another great video! I enjoyed Ys II except for getting lost in Salmon, er, Solomon Shrine, lol. I first played Ys I&II on the Turbografx CD and have been a fan ever since. Keep the PC-88 goodness coming!
I had to experience Ys 1 with the Chronicles+ that you mentioned. I grew up in the middle of nowhere and we were lucky to even know about the Atari 2600 and the NES and we didn't even have a computer until the Win95 era :) I've been working on Ys 2 and 3 lately, but its really impressive and awesome to see these games and that hardware like this existed.
Yeah. I mean. Pretty much same here. I only was able to get into Japanese PC's after I became an adult and moved to Japan. I grew up on NES, SNES, and Genesis... Maybe some TurboGrafX too. Our first computer was also around the same time. I'm retroactively nostalgic for Japanese PC's since they remind me of the graphics and sound of the machines I grew up with. But yeah, I didn't have them when I was a child either. Thanks for watching!
Thanks for the tips on the music tracks. I can use this video as a reference, it’s pretty handy! I enjoyed Y’s on the Turbo Graphix 16, I’d love to explore the modern iterations. I had no idea there was a Saturn versions! Great Stuff!
Great review as usual. While the PC-88 was a modest machine, it must be stressed that the FM capabilities of some later models made that computer extremely popular. Ys was one of those seminal series with unforgettable FM tracks. An interesting note about Ys 1 on Windows. Ys 1 Eternal was basically a preview version of Ys Complete/Chronicles. Although the two editions use 256 colours, the graphics of Ys 1 Complete were largely remade with more details and a better use of the palette. Ys 2 Eternal, on the other hand, is graphically identical to the later versions.
Nice to see a reference to Spaceballs and interminable nature of film scrolling. In the case of Spaceballs, I assumed on first watch in 89 or so that that was referencing Star Wars in some way (like a great deal of the movie overall) when it is in fact referencing 2001. Just think on it; bone thrown to the sky, transition to orbital weapon and space station, then ponderously focus on it spinning for like 30 seconds straight. Kubrick was quite the auteur, in both good and bad ways…
In Japan, there are still ARPGs along with Ys. It's "Hydlide". This is a trilogy, and 1 and 3 are said to be masterpieces.The first version was released in 1984 and was very popular.And it has been ported to many platforms. Looking back on it now, there are some things that don't make sense, but overall it's a very good game. Please give it a try.
Yeah, I want to do Hydlide eventually. The first one for PC-88 actually goes for a bit of a high price nowadays, but I'll have to try and pick it up anyway.
4:46 The program disk contains the opening and ending of the game. they REALLY wanted to show off. This must not have been a cheap box to pick up when it was new since they included so many extras and manufactured extra disks just for frills like an intro.
I think this game looks pretty nice and the scrolling is not so bad either for a PC-88 game,overral i really like this game i think it's really fun and the music is fantastic lookin' forward to a next episode of PC-88 paradise!
The art in that manual is amazing and more people need to know about it! I wish I knew who did the art for it, but of course falcom didn't credit them properly.
Hearing Adol pronounced that way never fails to make me cringe in somebody's videos. Thanks for showcasing the original version, though! I'm always interested to see how much changed compared to its later remade versions.
I played the TurboGrafX CD versions, so that will always be the official English pronunciation for me. Thanks for bearing with me and watching the video though!
The lack of mention of the DS versions of Ys 1 and 2 is crazy, cause those are by far the most interesting versions, they give you *an attack button* That's WILD
Nah, if you needed to make a game longer on PC-88, you just added more floppies. I heard it was simply that the length of the game they wanted to make grew too large, and they didn't have the time to do it all before they needed to release a product, so they just focused on the first part of the story in Ys 1.
@@BasementBrothers yeah I didn't mean literally lol. But they seemed close enough to me that when I played my first ys game recently I immediately thought of Metroid, I was playing a translation hack for mask of the sun and thought the hackers did some quality of life modifications while they were at it.
Really loving your reviews of this classic games. It is astonishing on how many different platforms and how many different versions of Ys I & II there are. They are all different, and yet, most of them keep that core experience that the original one had as well.
I first learned of and played Ys II as part of Complete version which I think is the same as Eternal. I got completely stuck in the first dungeon and lost interest in the game, I just did not find it to be as compelling as the first game was though I certainly did get megahype over the opening. Then I bought the Anime Ys Legacy DVD and was blown away by it. Honestly Ys II Castle in the Heavens is such a better version of Ys II from a narrative standpoint than the game is. Speaking of BB, have you played Ys II The Korean Dos version? Allow me to show you it here on my channel; ua-cam.com/video/BmXCEQE1234/v-deo.html&ab_channel=Zeithri I've been meaning for years to get back to playing through Ys I & II again in order to get through the rest of the Ys games. All in due time I suppose..
I like the dry box text. we wanna explore the theme further, if that sounds good, play it i guess
It's criminal that you don't have more views and subs. Game preservation is so important. Keep it up!
This was another great overview! I'm a relatively new Falcom fans and have never finished Ys II. I bought Ys Books I & II on the Wii's Virtual Console back in the day but only finished Ys I. Someday I'll either finish that version or finally play my copy Chronicles I purchased years ago. Also, fun piece of trivia, Ys II's opening has been recreated by some pretty famous people in the anime industry over the years. The Ys II Eternal opening was created by Makoto Shinkai back when he work at Falcom and the Saturn's opening was produced by Kyoto Animation back when they were just an outsource studio.
Definitely finish one of those versions (or both!). You'll have a blast!
Thanks for more interesting facts about the opening. That makes even more evidence for how culturally important a game opening it really is!
The hidden doors in Rasteenie will actually show up if you use the light magic, there are glowing stones nest to each door that respond to the magic. So while it isn't needed the game does give you a way to find them outside of trial and error.
Nice, I love how early Japanese computers accomplished really good graphics with a limited palette, no integrated scrolling and relatively low resolution, and Ys II is no exception.
It also saddens me that the art of making really interesting and nice looking Game Manuals is effectively lost now a days, people just take for granted having access to guides this easily now a days.
10:45 I feel like getting lost on the Shrine of Salmon is like a rite of passage rofl Even with the gamesfaq guide I got sooooo lost on my second playthru of the Chronicles Collection
YS Book I & II for PC Engine CD is the ULTIMATE version of this game. Anyone who calls themselves a gamer MUST play that version at least once in their lifetime.
thanks for that little tidbit about that unused track I have all the special boxes and am still discovering new gems from them. 91 specifically is the one I slept on but am now gaining some appreciation for what's on the discs.
Discs 2 and 3 of Special Box '91 are especially interesting to me since they contain "Falcom Unknown Music" which is a bunch of unused or otherwise seldom heard tracks. Another personal favorite is disc 3 of Special Box '95 as it contains the remainder of Ys IV JDK special that they couldn't fit on the standalone disc.
the OST in Ys Eternal had absolutely no obligation to go as hard as it did but Falcom delivered.
Starting things out with "Tender People". Oh my god! That is probably the best video game 'town music ' I've ever heard in my life. I think it's a masterpiece!
I'd comment on the rest of the video but I'm just now starting to watch it. I'm sure it will be great, though. I've really enjoyed this series!
I found this channel because I was interested where many PC Engine games originally came from. I'm happy the PC Engine is home to so many great ports of games that didn't see near the same level of succes on other consoles and I'm also pleasantly surprised how well the original versions of those games hold up. On a side note I just saw Spaceballs yesterday.
Glad to see you found the channel! I'm originally a PC Engine guy myself too since the 90's, so thanks for watching! Cheers.
Great video.
The tunes are amazing on the PC 8801 ,they had a Sega Mega Drive feel but more unique.
Finished Ys I and Ys III with a PC8801 emulator on my PSP ,played a lot of Ys II but I am stuck in the ice ridge of Noltia.
Imagine playing this game in 1988,the opening was mindblowing.
I also finished the PC Engine versions of Ys I-II-III and the PSP/PC remakes.
Arguably better because the sound chip was basically like a YM2151 which was used in many arcade boards by Sega and many other companies in the mid 80s-ewrly 90s. The YM2612 used in the Megadrive/Genesis was a stripped down version of the YM2151
My first exposure to the series was Ys 1 on the Master system back in 1991 and became since then a religius Falcom fan, but never had the original japanese releases, so this is gold to a person like me.
Loved the monster meeting skit! Great video as always!
Thanks for walking us through the game! It was cool to hear the shoutout to Goodbye/Sayonara Adol, which is perhaps in my Top 3 Falcom songs despite being unused! Great video. Watched it with my dog and she also liked it. Have a good day!
Great video. Just like when I first played it on the TG-16 CD, I would have been totally floored by the intro on this system! They definitely upped my expectations for opening scenes in future games. Ys Book I & II is only topped by the original Legend of Zelda as my favorite game.
I think "Salmon" was a mistranslation of "Solomon". If you look at some of the soundtracks it's listed as "Solomon"
Just beaten ys 1 and now starting ys 2, the chronicles version. Your channel is great! Love your rpg videos!
Gem of a game and Gem of a channel - looking forward to Ys3?
I'm hoping to do Ys 3 as well in the near future.
I've only played this on the version for Steam. As a Master System owner who owns YS 1 I'm still bummed that this one never got a Master System release.
That was probably due to the fact that the Master System was discontinued in Japan at the timeframe a Master System version of Ys II should have been released, hence why it was probably never considered. Sega could have still bothered with one for North America (which was still receiving Master System games, even though was already in its way out too) and especially Europe, like for example what was done with Ultima IV, but I suppose they didn't see it fit. What's even more odd is that Sega wouldn't bother with a Mega Drive version either. Instead, they opted to do a Mega Drive version of Sorcerian.
Love Ys! Can't believe this one didn't get brought to me sooner!
This is truly an impressive game for when it was released and this video overview shows how impressive it is. My personal favorite version of this game is the remake you mentioned in this video on Steam and PSP. I loved how in the remake every character had their own sprite, dialogue, and even a character entry that expanded on that character even more. Heck in Ys II on Steam it even had a friendship mechanic where if you blasted somebody with a fireball they would dislike you more, but if you gave them ether an apple or flower they would like you more and they had over half a dozen bits of dialogue for you depending on how much they liked/disliked you. Their dialogue also changed depending on the events in the story as well.
"To Make the End of Battle" is my favorite Ys track. Even before I knew what Ys was, I had an Amiga mod music file of the song I used to jam out to all the time. The version of the song in the Chronicles Collection for PSP is extraordinary, along with the FMV cutscene that goes with it, but it is cool to see where it all began :)
Another great video! I enjoyed Ys II except for getting lost in Salmon, er, Solomon Shrine, lol. I first played Ys I&II on the Turbografx CD and have been a fan ever since. Keep the PC-88 goodness coming!
I had to experience Ys 1 with the Chronicles+ that you mentioned. I grew up in the middle of nowhere and we were lucky to even know about the Atari 2600 and the NES and we didn't even have a computer until the Win95 era :) I've been working on Ys 2 and 3 lately, but its really impressive and awesome to see these games and that hardware like this existed.
Yeah. I mean. Pretty much same here. I only was able to get into Japanese PC's after I became an adult and moved to Japan. I grew up on NES, SNES, and Genesis... Maybe some TurboGrafX too. Our first computer was also around the same time. I'm retroactively nostalgic for Japanese PC's since they remind me of the graphics and sound of the machines I grew up with. But yeah, I didn't have them when I was a child either. Thanks for watching!
Super great video!!! Thanks for posting! Gonna go play me some Ys, wooo
Great work on this one.
Thanks for the tips on the music tracks. I can use this video as a reference, it’s pretty handy! I enjoyed Y’s on the Turbo Graphix 16, I’d love to explore the modern iterations. I had no idea there was a Saturn versions! Great Stuff!
Great review as usual. While the PC-88 was a modest machine, it must be stressed that the FM capabilities of some later models made that computer extremely popular. Ys was one of those seminal series with unforgettable FM tracks.
An interesting note about Ys 1 on Windows. Ys 1 Eternal was basically a preview version of Ys Complete/Chronicles. Although the two editions use 256 colours, the graphics of Ys 1 Complete were largely remade with more details and a better use of the palette. Ys 2 Eternal, on the other hand, is graphically identical to the later versions.
Informative and hilarious as usual 🤣
Never disappointed man 👍
Nice to see a reference to Spaceballs and interminable nature of film scrolling.
In the case of Spaceballs, I assumed on first watch in 89 or so that that was referencing Star Wars in some way (like a great deal of the movie overall) when it is in fact referencing 2001.
Just think on it; bone thrown to the sky, transition to orbital weapon and space station, then ponderously focus on it spinning for like 30 seconds straight.
Kubrick was quite the auteur, in both good and bad ways…
Great video, nothing else like this channel on UA-cam. Japanese PC games don't get nearly enough love.
I played this one on the MSX2 back in the day. Somehow I managed to finish it on my own without knowing a lick of Japanese.
Great game.
Ah yes... the grinding basement and grinding balcony. Good times.
In Japan, there are still ARPGs along with Ys.
It's "Hydlide".
This is a trilogy, and 1 and 3 are said to be masterpieces.The first version was released in 1984 and was very popular.And it has been ported to many platforms. Looking back on it now, there are some things that don't make sense, but overall it's a very good game.
Please give it a try.
Yeah, I want to do Hydlide eventually. The first one for PC-88 actually goes for a bit of a high price nowadays, but I'll have to try and pick it up anyway.
4:46 The program disk contains the opening and ending of the game. they REALLY wanted to show off. This must not have been a cheap box to pick up when it was new since they included so many extras and manufactured extra disks just for frills like an intro.
You do exactly what i intend to do! But in french lol
hard cover manuals sound like such an awesome idea
I think this game looks pretty nice and the scrolling is not so bad either for a PC-88 game,overral i really like this game i think it's really fun and the music is fantastic lookin' forward to a next episode of PC-88 paradise!
The art in that manual is amazing and more people need to know about it! I wish I knew who did the art for it, but of course falcom didn't credit them properly.
Sure they credited him! (But I didn't in this video. :( ) The art is by Kazuhiko Tsuzuki, who was a full-time employee of Falcom at the time.
Thank you for this video and the review!
Hearing Adol pronounced that way never fails to make me cringe in somebody's videos. Thanks for showcasing the original version, though! I'm always interested to see how much changed compared to its later remade versions.
I played the TurboGrafX CD versions, so that will always be the official English pronunciation for me. Thanks for bearing with me and watching the video though!
Those rooms at about 8 minutes in, don't their entrences light up when you equip the Light Magic?
Oh yeah. Good call, they probably do. I definitely should've used the light magic more.
Thanks.
The lack of mention of the DS versions of Ys 1 and 2 is crazy, cause those are by far the most interesting versions, they give you *an attack button*
That's WILD
I've heard that this was split from Ancient Ys Vanished due the size constraints of the 5.25 floppies.
Nah, if you needed to make a game longer on PC-88, you just added more floppies. I heard it was simply that the length of the game they wanted to make grew too large, and they didn't have the time to do it all before they needed to release a product, so they just focused on the first part of the story in Ys 1.
Wouldn't that be... Ys-dropping? (@ 11:00)
I'll show myself out.
Is it me going crazy or the sound for opening chests is the same as finding an item in Metroid? I noticed that when playing ys IV.
No they are different tunes. lol. Kind of similar though. Thanks for watching.
@@BasementBrothers yeah I didn't mean literally lol. But they seemed close enough to me that when I played my first ys game recently I immediately thought of Metroid, I was playing a translation hack for mask of the sun and thought the hackers did some quality of life modifications while they were at it.
Now that's really ancient technology. And it's as old as myself.
I guess it's pretty expensive.
Really loving your reviews of this classic games. It is astonishing on how many different platforms and how many different versions of Ys I & II there are. They are all different, and yet, most of them keep that core experience that the original one had as well.
I can not for the life of me find that Ys II opening on gameboy by Medium Videos. UA-cam search is so bad nowadays.
ua-cam.com/video/thjwJmv6Vqk/v-deo.html
Only ever beat the first game
Gotta be honest, I hate bump combat. I wish there was a mod for these first games to make them like Zelda where you swing a sword.
I first learned of and played Ys II as part of Complete version which I think is the same as Eternal. I got completely stuck in the first dungeon and lost interest in the game, I just did not find it to be as compelling as the first game was though I certainly did get megahype over the opening. Then I bought the Anime Ys Legacy DVD and was blown away by it. Honestly Ys II Castle in the Heavens is such a better version of Ys II from a narrative standpoint than the game is.
Speaking of BB, have you played Ys II The Korean Dos version?
Allow me to show you it here on my channel; ua-cam.com/video/BmXCEQE1234/v-deo.html&ab_channel=Zeithri
I've been meaning for years to get back to playing through Ys I & II again in order to get through the rest of the Ys games.
All in due time I suppose..