Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys
Year of Release: 1993
Developed by Nihon Falcom
Published by Hudson Soft
For Super CD-ROM² System

For starters, Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys is a TOTALLY different game than it's counterpart, Ys IV: Mask of Sun. The only things which are same in these games are the character names and some of the locatins. The story is almost totally different. The last Ys game for PC Engine was a HUGE hit when it was released in Japan: every damn copy of the game was sold out on the first day, still leaving thousands of people without a copy. Many people claims that Ys 4 is the best game in the series, and IMHO, this is true. After the failed Ys3 platformer, Falcom decided to return to the original Ys format.

What can I say? This game has to be the best action RPG game ever released for PCE. The graphics really takes everything out of PCE's 512 color palette. Well, those pictures in the left should tell you everything needed. ;) There are only 2 PCE CD games who can compete with Ys 4's cut-scenes (TM Manjimaru and Fuun Kabuki Den). The scenes are true jaw-droppers. I still can't believe how the hell did they fit the whole opening animation to Super System Card's memory? Everything is so damn well animated and every animation scene has the full color palette in use. The in-game graphics are spectacular and some the character's portraits are nearly full-screen. This game surely uses every ounce of PCE's graphical capabilities. Then comes the audio part. For the musics, I only need to say 2 words: Ryo Yonemitsu. The game music god is back and the music is even better than in the godly-sounding Ys 3. The music isn't as upbeat as in Ys 3's, but the melodies are better. The quitar themes in track 11 are unbeliveable and the drum riffs in track 20 are something that can't be described in words. The soundtrack of Ys 4 is already a prefectly good reason to buy this game. The gameplay has gone through a small set of changes: now you can move to eight directions instead of four, which makes the boss fights a LOT easier. The gameplay is overall excellent, just like in the previous Ys games.

The game starts with a beautiful opening sequence, which shows the climax of the battle against Darm in Ys Book 2. Next, Adol and Dogi returns to Esteria after their journey to Dogi's hometown in Felgana. In the port Dogi and Adol meet's Dogi's boss, Goban. After a joyous reunion, the three starts to walk from the port to the town of Minea. Everyone from the town comes to meet their hero, Adol, who rescued Esteria and Ys from Darm. Adol meets the fortune teller Saria and she says about the town of Promarock, which has befallen under the ownership of general Leo. Then Adol follows Dogi and Goban to the bar, where everyone is already pretty drunk. Evening comes and the three decides to go to bed. In the morning, Lilia comes to their house to see how Adol is doing. But Adol is nowhere to be found... and another awesome anime sequence follows. ^^

Buy/download this game. NOW.

Tack info:
Track 1: The normal warning-speech
Track 2: Data, contains everything else except speech.
Tracks 3-31: CD-DA
Track 32: Data, contains speech and contains a small piece of cut-scene animations.

Emulation info:

Magic Engine: Playable in both Windows and DOS, but has problems with cut-scenes* .
Hu-Go!: Playable.
HuDX/Hu6280: Playable, dumped ISO's of tracks 2 and 32, played through a TOC file.
Real PCE / TG16: Since I don't own a real TG/PCE, I can't test a CDR copy... E-Mail me your results.

* I don't know if my data tracks are corrupted, but the game freezes in the opening (where Adol attacks Darm, the second-lowest picture on the left) and ending cut-scenes. It also crashes in a certain cut-scene, but I'm not going to tell in which one because it would be a spoiler. :( Anyone else has this same problem? Contact me if your copy doesn't hang in ME.

Data track info:

Shimarisu checked out track 2 and it seems that the script is compressed. I checked out both data tracks and it seems that the kanji, hiragana and katakana tables are compressed... I found a weird English font from track 32, and graphics for an internal CD player :P. A translation would be possible (if someone has the skills to crack the compression), except for the ADPCM speech parts. The CD-DA tracks could be subtitled with Hu-Go!'s HCD subtitling. The CD is pretty full, so fitting a translated script, etc. could be a small problem...

CD-DA info:

Audio tracks are called in separately. No adjustments needed.

Current progress: Finished!

This was an easy project.. I only changed the pregaps to zero, so the audio would sync perfectly. ^^

Downloads:

Released CUE file HERE
Released CDRWIN CUE file HERE

Sample MP3's:

Track 9
Track 11
Track 19
Track 20