Heads up.  Famitsu is hosting an exclusive promo video of Falcom's upcoming Ys Origin.  You have to be registered with Famitsu's Game Music Download service to download it.  It's free, so everyone go register and check it out.  http://listen.jp/game/hot.aspx?inc=ysorigin  Even if you don't live in Japan, you should still be able to register if you can read and input Japanese.  Just lie about the prefecture you live in. ^^  Anyway, Origin looks badass in motion.  And the song played during the movie is awesome.  Has a feel really similar to opening theme of Napishtim.  And call me crazy, but it actually sounds like a weird mix between Ken's and Ryu's themes from SFII at times.  Anyway here's the best part: Evidently the game is coming out on December 21st!  Merry Christmas indeed.

- Justin Pfeiffer

Hmm, not having much luck with my Japanese...Is anyone posting this for download?

**Update*** Never mind...found it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGsWSILaYXk

Thanks

I was thinking the exact same thing the first time I heard it. For the most part I like the song, but I'm not really digging that chorus sample/synth they used for the lead in the beginning. Maybe they'll fix it up a bit before the final release. I'm guessing the track will sound it little bit different in the game (like Felghana and the music in it's trailers).

You can grab the trailer from my website
http://gillianseed.free.fr/video

Enjoy~

Thankyou sir!

Since this is coming out soon, does anyone have any recommended online shops for buying Falcom games (PC versions only, not PS2/PSP verions) because I'd probably pick up a few more titles as well as Origin...  Or should I just order direct?

Paletweb.com shows for $77, and Himeyashop.com shows for $80, any other shop recommendations?   

I only bought direct once, many years ago, but I've forgotten Falcom's email ordering procedure by now...

http://falcomcdcatalog.slightlydark.com/falcom/order

The main problems with ordering direct from Falcom are (a) outrageous shipping charges, typically amounting to 30%+ of the cost of the order, (b) currency conversion fees that credit cards now tack on (it's like paying a 3% surcharge), and (c) the fact that the charge doesn't hit until the end of the month after the month they ship it out.  The good thing about ordering straight from Falcom is that they pack everything really well, and sometimes throw in some bonus goodies.

If you live in the US, you'll get the game for 9400 yens ~ 79USD, shipping fees inc. if you order directly from Falcom.
That's better than anything else.

.

Can't you do the software order through Cocobiz?

9400 yen is really worth that little in American dollars right now?  Ughughugh why are my savings so worthless?  >_<

Good for game/music shopping for people in America... bad for when I move back home next year!

Sorry, that was a bit off topic. 

Wow... Gillian upfalcomed you?  I didn't think it was possible
So here's a question, the games are all in Japanese, right?  I assume they run under windows without any issues, but if you can't understand the game it's a bit of a problem.  I wonder why Falcom doesn't bring more of their products over to the US (with full translation and the like)?

cheers,

-avatar!

They run under any Windows XP, as long as you set the Regional Language Setting Preference to Japanese.   

I got all the way through Oath in Felghana without knowing a lick of Japanese, because it's pretty much straight action fare, so don't let the text stop you from enjoying a great game!

Now I want to order Ys I & II Complete along with Ys Origin.  (I & II have fan translated enlish patches)

Did some quick googling, and it seems that an english patch for Oath in Felghana is very close to being completed, probably by December.   Which means I get to enjoy it again WITH a story now, Yay!

.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SNthFpokTc

Is it just me, or has the quality of Falcom's first-run bonuses gone way downhill this year? I bought just about everything they put out between Legend of Heroes V and Felghana, largely on the strength of the bonuses they were offering, but this year I've barely even been tempted. I'll probably get ED6SC and Origins eventually, but an art book or drama CD isn't enough to convince me to pay full price when I can get the game for a fraction of the price next year.

That's because you don't really know what will be included with YsO.
They sometime didn't tell everything about them, (for example, Xanadu Next OST was included with Genso Sangokushi II but they don't talk about it on their site).
And there's another month before the release, they still can add stuff.

You can get the new videos of Ys Origin from my website ( http://gillianseed.free.fr/video )
It's funny that they did two different videos.
The music sounds like it has a much better quality than before ! (YsF-like quality)

Umm... I must be doing something wrong then, as I can't get my Shing Tears Material Collection cdrom to function properly, and I did all that.

Ys I&II Complete is goood.  I played it for several hours in one sitting one my old Win98 machine, which play Japanese games fine, I just couldn't recover any save data as the file was in Japanese text.

I agree with you there most points, sva the one about LoH VI FC and SC.

As long as they translate and release the PSP ports somebody will buy them.  Due to the lack of quality software, and quality rpgs released lately for the PSP (man, have NIS's recent deliverings been questionable or what?) those games are all but assured to make at least some money. 

And as lousy as Bandai's translatons have been for the previous LoH games (it seems to me sales of LoH IV must have surprised them as LoH III followed it; it felt to me like they planned to skip III, then released it when they saw they could make cash from the series) I did enjoy them, and as large as a company as Bandai is, they can afford to mass market games.  I've found LoH III at the Best Buys in my area, the game must have a decently sized print run for Best Buy to carry it.

And what do you mean by Suikoden barely staying afloat here?  If the series didn't have appeal here I doubt Konami would have bothered to release Suikoden Tactics (i.e. the Suikoden series cash in game, Rhapsodia).  I can't quite recall why they aren't releasing Suikoden I&II PSP here, but I don't think it has anything to do with lack of apeal, but more likely Sony trying to "quality control" the PSP games by monitoring the PS1 ports that get released over here.  Though, quite frankly, I'd have much rather played Suikoden I&II than Popolocrois, but considering Popolocrois never came out before in the US, and it was a first party Sony dev-ed game, well, you can see where I'm going. 

Ok, ending O.T rant now.  Regardless, I want Ys Origin.  And slightly, O.T. does Falcom's hp have any news on this so called Ys Online game I caught a snippet on from GAME Watch?  Sorry, I don't have a link to the article anymore. 

IIRC, the cause of that problem is that the game will write to the saved game file the date and time it was created, and then can't read it when it tries to load. This is because it writes out a non-Japanese date/time and then tries to read according to Japanese formatting rules, or possibly the other way around.

In any case, the solution is to set the user-level language (not the system-level language) to Japanese. Open up Regional/Language Options from the Control Panel, and select Japanese from the drop-down list in the Standards and Formats box.

Unfortunately, this will cause some of your other applications (e.g., your e-mail client) to write Japanese-formatted dates, so if this isn't okay, you'll have to change this every time you play the game.

I think, in regards to Suikoden (and Ys Ark of Napishtim, to a degree), Konami is trying to build their portfolio of RPG's. They can see from the SE business model (and to a lesser extent, Nippon Ichi and Atlus) how profitable it can be if something catches on. Bandai's probably trying to do the same with the LOH series. Since Falcom's a smaller company that makes excellent games, but probably doesn't have the means to attack the US market on their own, their stuff is probably appealing to the larger companies that want a piece of the US market. They've already expressed interest in bringing Oath of Felghana over. If that happens, we'll definitely see Origins, I'd wager.

I understand what they're doing: building their reputation and probably making JUST enough to break even (or if not, they're just writing the costs off). I can tell from Suikoden V, it was supposed to be a major strike at the US market, considering how quickly the translation was done and the overall quality of it and the English dub and considering the game was one of the larger RPG's released. Unfortunately, it was largely ignored by much of the mainstream gaming press and was relatively ignored overall. I don't think they're profiting off the series, but rather building it up by word-of-mouth and continually releasing it. Which, if you look at how Final Fantasy or the old GTA games started or even the older Elder Scrolls games, isn't a bad idea.

More than likely, if I ever splurge on a PSP, it'll be for the Falcom content (getting LOH VI over here would be major and Gurumin is definitely good news). I do wish they'd consider DS ports instead though...Or even just PS2.

Or setup a separate user for this. Nowadays operating systems are capable of running several users at the same time.

Some music samples are now available for download :
The Guidance of White Tower
Tower of the Shadow of Death
Water Prison
Scars of the Divine Wing
Oboro
Prologue - Ys Origin
Movement of Wicked Energy

Sounds really great to me!  Why oh why can't Felghana and this come to NA?

Very nice.  I'll definitely be pre-ordering the OST as soon as Kahori has it up.