The Falcom Thread

[Nester the Lark]

I wanted to put this here to archive it, because it's actually a bit hard to find resources on the history of Falcom... And now I know why.

Falcom's music is credited to "Sound Team jdk." But who exactly are they? Here is a project that aims to identify exactly who these individuals are, as well as exactly what music tracks they composed.

Why the secrecy? Well, if you look at the History tab, it includes some history of Falcom, itself, including an infamous mass staff exodus from 1989. This was the result of Falcom's founder and former president, Masayuki Kato, insisting that an in-development side-scrolling action-RPG be re-branded as an Ys game (Ys III: Wanderers from Ys) strictly for brand recognition purposes. This upset much of the staff so much that all but a few of them quit the company. It was a very public fiasco that led to Kato instating a company policy that staff would no longer be individually credited so as to prevent talented members from being recognized over the company name, itself. That practice continues at Falcom, to this day.

Obviously, this was not unusual among Japanese game developers in the '80s and '90s, with staff at companies like Capcom, Konami, SNK, Sega, etc. (even Nintendo) often being credited with pseudonyms. In fact, even Atari had a similar policy in its early days that programmers were not to take credit for the games they created. (This is what led to members of its own staff leaving and founding Activision.)

Still, I find it off-putting. This isn't something that should be happening in modern game development.

[nocturnal YL]

Whoa. I'm speechless. I thought having staff uncredited is a thing of the past ever since the industry collectively decided not to work for such employers.

That said, I think receiving no credits for individual songs is actually quite common? A lot of games just map composers to games, not individual tracks.

The other takeaway from this seems tobe that they're gradually replacing good musicians with ones who aren't as good. This doesn't instill confidence.

[nocturnal YL]

Trails of Cold Steel I and II are getting Japanese Switch releases.

[Nester the Lark]

At least the Switch will have the whole Cold Steel tetralogy. I think it's very likely Xseed will release these in English.

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EDIT:

Seems that the Crossbell arc (Zero no Kiseki and Ao no Kiseki) are also being ported to Switch. These have never been officially translated to English, but Western fans have been wanting them for years. With Switch and PS4 versions being a thing, I can see NISA localizing them eventually.

[Nester the Lark]

Falcom's annual shareholding meeting is on December 17. They'll likely reveal their release plans for the next year at it.

[Nester the Lark]

I guess this is the first look at the next Trails/Kiseki game, as well as Falcom's new game engine:

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EDIT: Apparently, Nayuta no Kiseki is being ported to PS4 for release in 2021.

Nayuta no Kiseki is actually not related to the Kiseki series, it just had the name applied to it to help it sell (and it worked). Gameplay-wise, it's an action-RPG that I've seen compared to the Zwei and Ys series'. It was originally released for the PSP in 2012, and it never had an official Western release. I guess this is another chance for that.

[Nester the Lark]

So, there's not much in the way of leaks from the shareholder meeting due to the usual informants not being present. The game announcements were from Famitsu.

Here are the official (Japanese) sites for Kuro no Kiseki and Nayuta no Kiseki Kai.

I'll update this post if anything comes to light.

[Nester the Lark]

So, I have finished playing through Yunica's route in the Switch version of Ys Origin.

For the most part, it's a good port. It looks good and runs well, but I can nitpick about a couple of things.

My main issue is an audio glitch that causes the music to stutter when it first starts playing a track. It's not too big of a deal, but it takes me out of the experience a little bit, and at worst, ruins one of my favorite musical cues in the game.

The other is that I wish the in-game text was just slightly larger. It's perfectly readable as it is, but I guess I'm just used to Switch games having very large, clear text for when you play in handheld mode. (Some of the menus also seem a bit small, but it was the same in the PC version.)

Clearing the game once unlocked a Speedrun mode, which was not in the original PC version. There are also online leaderboards for both the Speedrun and Time Trial modes. I have not tried either yet.

Overall, it's good ol' Ys Origin. I wondered whether it was worth it for me to purchase this game again at nearly four times the cost of a digital Switch copy at sale price, even though I already own a digital PC version that I've finished multiple times. But playing through it again has reminded me why I enjoy it so much, so I'm satisfied to have a physical copy in my library.

(I would just like Dotemu to patch the audio glitch.)

EDIT:

Something I forgot to add is that you can fast forward through cutscenes, which is useful for skipping long cutscenes before boss fights. This was not in the PC version.

Also, a correction: It seems the online leaderboards are only for Speedrun mode, not Time Trial, which seems odd.

[Nester the Lark]

I wanted to share this cool video I came across. It shows all of the Ys games in the order of the official timeline (except for showing Origin after Ys I & II). It also shows some of the different versions of each game, along with clips from cutscenes and official artwork, all set to various music selections. It's very well done. It's almost like watching an official promo video for the Ys series.

[Nester the Lark]

March 9 marks Falcom's 40th anniversary.

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EDIT: Here is the Falcom 40th anniversary website, all in Japanese.

They also streamed a special broadcast hosted by Toshihiro Kondo, also all in Japanese:

[nocturnal YL]

One YouTube video series I watch is Wha Happun?, a series that covers troubled productions behind games and movies. Usually it's infamously bad games that end up here, but there are also well-received games with development issues.

This week's episode is on Legend of Heroes: Trails In The Sky SC. The game is fine, but it's massive and localisation takes Herculean effort.

[Nester the Lark]

This is a pretty good summary. I remember following a lot of this while it was happening. I felt bad for the fans who were waiting for so long, and so frustrated by it.

Xseed wrote their own localization blogs for the Trails in the Sky trilogy. If you're interested in the gritty details, you can find them here: One, two, three, four.

A funny thing I remember is that fans saw the name "Trails of Cold Steel" show up on a European online store, and speculated that it might be the English title for Sen no Kiseki. The person who ran the Falcom fan site Endless History (which seems to be dormant) responded by writing an entire news article debunking that theory, saying that there was no way Xseed would begin localizing the latest Kiseki game before Sky SC was even out the door. She ended up with egg on her face pretty soon after that.

EDIT: Oh, and if you want to read Andrew Dice's own blog post on the situation, it's a little... intense.

[Nester the Lark]

So, while not an official announcement, it seems we have the first whispers of the next Ys game:

He cites his source in the comments.

[Nester the Lark]

Ys IX is coming to Switch and PC on July 6!



Hope it's a good port.

[Nester the Lark]

Here are interesting tweets by Yuzo Koshiro & his sister containing old sketches for Ys II.