| Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished | |
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Boxart of the North American Master System release |
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| Developer(s) | Falcom (PC-88/PC-98/X1/FM-7/MSX2/Windows) Advance Communication (FC) Sega (SMS) Denpa Shinbunsha (X68000) Broderbund (Apple IIGS) KYODAI(IBM-PC/AT(MS-DOS)) Alfa System (TGCD) Team Digi (PS2) Dreams (NDS) |
| Publisher(s) | Various |
| Designer(s) | Masaya Hashimoto (director, designer) Tomoyoshi Miyazaki (scenario writer) |
| Programmer(s) | Masaya Hashimoto |
| Composer(s) | Yuzo Koshiro Mieko Ishikawa |
| Platform(s) | NEC PC-8801, X1, NEC PC-9801, FM-7/77, FM-77AV, MSX2, Sharp X68000, Sega Master System, FC, TurboGrafx-16, MS-DOS, Apple IIGS, Microsoft Windows, Sega Saturn, PlayStation 2, Virtual Console, Nintendo DS |
| Release date(s) | PC-8801 June 21, 1987 X1 June 26, 1987 PC-9801 August 28, 1987 FM-7/77 October 8, 1987 FM-77AV October 8, 1987 MSX2 December 10, 1987 Family Computer August 26, 1988 Sega Mark III October 15, 1988 Sega Master System 1988 ? IBM-PC/AT(MS-DOS) ? X68000 July 19, 1991 Nintendo DS February 10, 2008 |
| Genre(s) | Action role-playing game |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished (イースI Īsu Wan) (also Ys: The Vanished Omens or The Ancient Land of Ys) is the first installment of Ys, an action role-playing video game series developed by Falcom in 1987. The name is commonly misspelt Y's due to an error on the packaging of an English-language release.
Initially developed for the PC-8801 by Masaya Hashimoto (director, programmer, designer) and Tomoyoshi Miyazaki (scenario writer), the game was soon ported to the X1, PC-9801, FM-7/FM-77, FM-77AV and MSX2 Japanese computer systems.[1] Ancient Ys Vanished saw many subsequent releases, such as English-language versions for the Master System, MS-DOS, IIGS, and TurboGrafx-16, and enhanced remakes for the Saturn and Windows systems. The game was also released as part of a compilation, Ys I & II, for the TurboGrafx-CD in 1989. It has also been released for the Nintendo DS.
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The hero of Ys is an adventurous young swordsman named Adol Christin. As the story begins, he has just arrived at the Town of Minea, in the land of Esteria. He is called upon by Sara, a fortuneteller, who tells him of a great evil that is sweeping the land.
Adol is informed that he must seek out the six Books of Ys. These books contain the history of the ancient land of Ys, and will give him the knowledge he needs to defeat the evil forces. Sara gives Adol a crystal for identification and instructs him to find her aunt in Zepik Village, who holds the key to retrieving one of the Books. With that, his quest begins.
The player controls Adol on a game field viewed from a top-down perspective. As he travels on the main field and explores dungeons, he will encounter numerous roaming enemies, which he must battle in order to progress.
Combat in Ys is rather different from other RPGs at the time, which either had turn-based battles or a manually-activated sword. Ys instead features a battle system where Adol automatically attacks when walking into enemies off-center. When the protagonist moves toward his enemy, damage is sustained on both sides. Attacking straight on causes the attacker the most damage to himself, but clipping the edge of the defender yields a successful differential. This combat system was created with accessibility in mind. This 'bump attack' system has become one of the series' defining features.[2] 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. According to GamesTM and John Szczepaniak (of Retro Gamer and The Escapist), "Repetition of the act was pleasurable as you developed a psychological rhythm and, even in the event of backtracking, progress was always swift since the player never needed to stop moving."[1]
Another feature that has been used in nearly every Ys title since the original is the recharging health mechanic, which had previously only been used in the Hydlide series. Recharging health has since become a common mechanic used in many video games today.[2][3]
Aside from graphical differences, the game layout remains essentially the same across the many ports of Ys; however, there are some versions where the details were changed. The Sega Master System version, for example, saw some of the game's dungeon areas flipped horizontally (including some other minor differences).
The most distinctive of the early ports was the Famicom edition, which was published by Victor Musical Industries. This version was a vast departure from the original, featuring entirely new layouts for the towns, field, and dungeons, replacement of a number of the original musical tracks, and a new final battle sequence.
The version developed for the MSX contained a handful of new musical tracks which replaced part of the original game's soundtrack. Some of these tracks, along with a number of unused tracks first composed for the original, were later incorporated into the soundtrack of Ys Eternal and Ys Complete.
The versions developed for the PC Engine CD-ROM², released as Ys I & II in 1989, and Sega Saturn included additional cutscenes, such as an opening detailing Adol's arrival in the town of Minea. The Microsoft Windows-based remakes, Ys Eternal and Ys Complete, expand further on this and many other story elements, through both cutscenes and additional gameplay.
The Sharp X68000 enhanced remake released in 1991 was notable for its early use of 3D pre-rendering for the boss sprites. However, this ended up creating what is considered "a bizarre contrast" with the game's mostly 2D graphics.[4]
Composed by Yuzo Koshiro along with Mieko Ishikawa, the soundtrack is notable for its rich melodies,[5] in an age when video game music was beginning to progress from monotonous bleeps. The Ys soundtrack is considered to have some of the best video game music ever composed,[1][5][6] and it is considered one of the finest and most influential role-playing video game scores of all time.[1][7]
Several soundtrack albums dedicated to the music of Ys have been released by Falcom. These include:
The game was reviewed in 1991 in Dragon #172 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars.[8]
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