My “theme” for 2021 was playing through all the main games in the Legend of Zelda series. But somewhere along the line I also got completely hooked on the Ys series, and am now through five of the ten games in that franchise.
Most recently was Ys: Memories of Celceta, which, to put it in simpler terms, is a remake of the fourth Ys game. But then I was looking into the original, and… it’s not quite that simple. Apparently, there were two similar but distinct games bearing the mantle of “Ys IV”, one for PC Engine and one for Super Famicom. There was even a third version in the works for the Mega Drive, but that one got canned. And then a PS2 “remake” happened that deviated quite a bit from both of the previous versions. And now we have Memories of Celceta, which goes even farther out from the source material and probably is more of an original game that was inspired by the previous games, rather than an actual remake. Also it’s the canonical version of Ys IV, since it was the only one fully developed by Falcom.
See? It’s a bit messy!
But I have good news for you: Hardcore Gaming 101 has an unbelievably thorough write-up on everything related to Ys IV. It’s a very interesting story, and quite honestly, the whole history of Ys is pretty well worth looking into, if just for the sake of seeing how many console ports each title got and how different they all ended up being.
I don’t know if I’ve ever plugged HG101 before, but it’s an amazing website, and you owe it to yourself to check it out if you have even the slightest interest in video game history and/or localization.