It is my hope that Falcom will port this game to PS4/Steam themselves and bypass Xseed.
Heh, that would be my sincere wish as well or another publisher/localizer like Atlus replaced 'em, but their partnership is pretty firm after all the previous titles they licensed so not gonna happen... :/ I really do hate the position that Tom-chan Lipschultz put me in, but I do have to stand up for myself.
After reading about your story a few weeks back, I am so glad I did not buy the Ys games from GoG.
Appreciate it! It's an uphill battle obviously and it's dispiriting where you see that some just don't care, pretend there's nothing wrong, or worse, those disgruntled bigoted types that took glee/enjoyment with me being cheated, exactly the people I feel Lipschultz was catering to with what he did and laughing along with...
I still remember back when you first started on the Ys VI translation project and how awesome I thought it was as that was before I went to uni to study Japanese.
Woah, you go way way back then! That was 2003-2004-ish! And speaking of that, I actually went ahead and released a patch of that project the day XSEED went live with their localization on Steam, though it needs plenty editing still, heh. Then after I saw what PirateBay Sarah did on the same day also, well, I shared that too. The trolls on the XSEED forums actually noticed and one of 'em said, "It feels like a kick in the nuts." Guess they still keep an eye on me from time to time... Heh-heh. Sometimes I wish I never got involved at all in the fan translation gig, but oh well. :/
I never did open Ys Origin though and really do not want to now. I don't think I have the ISO for it anymore either. I ordered it and Felghana from Falcom themselves. It was so exciting at the time.
Yeah, I sure do remember that feeling when my boxes arrived! I love Falcom's packaging.
You know, actually, I never sat down to beat Ys Origin either. I hacked it for Jeff "DeuceBag" Nussbaum, I extracted the Japanese script, upgraded my translation software to give him full editing control, instant testing, etc. that is, with a few button clicks, he could translate its text to English, instantly insert it into the game, catch context errors, etc. total control/instant testing to let him do all the translating and editing without my further intervention and then eventually what happened is he redirected the translated results to Lipschultz's programmer buddy, as part of a double-cross amongst themselves and he again redirected the results to XSEED, this time getting paid and credited 100%!
So yeah, that's how things left off with me with Ys Origin. He essentially tricked me into working for him. I should've taken his offer to pay me for the extraction, instead I wound up giving him $550 just a few months later, another regret I'll have to live with... No doubt about it to me, he is a monster that played me for years, I'm just a poor judge of character, a great failure of mine that has gotten me in trouble many times, both offline and online... :/ But yeah, the game just got left behind in my mind with how XSEED came along and his secret deals of shame...
I was never able to finish Felghana because my laptop utterly died during the final boss battle and I had no idea about the stupid hidden file save sata bullshit that Falcom loved pulling back then, grrrr!
Heh, I have an issue with the final boss battle as well! I beat the game on normal mode, but I unlocked the final "Inferno" difficulty mode, got to the end, maxed out Adol, and STILL couldn't defeat Galbalan, "the marauder from far off lands..."
He IS one of the best, epic bosses ever, really tests your ability to pay attention, predict patterns, dodge at the right time, etc.!! Felghana was Falcom's golden age.
You can NOT be lazy when you go up against him, Falcom made you work for that victory which makes it all the more satisfying. Of course Inferno mode is made available with their final patch and if you want the maximum challenge.
I also remember when XAK III and Ys IV Mask of the Sun translations were started! I think it was on the Ys forum?? I do not remember now.
Well, if you're talking Xak III, I started that in the RIGG forums (Retro ISO Gaming Guild) in late 2001, and Ys IV:MotS got started probably in places like The Whirlpool/Donut, the predecessor to romhacking.net and Neill Corlett's forums with translator Shimarisu.
You probably remember the Ys Goddesses art in the RIGG forum frame on the left that Tenchi-no-ryu (Stephen Harris) made who left to run RPGFAN.com for a couple of years.
I wish Falcom and gone for the PS3 instead of the bloody PSP when they decided to make console games again. I waited and waited for that promised PC upgrade of Ys VII which of course never happened.
I hate that they had to quit the PC platform (nothing coded by them internally). I kinda hoped it'd eventually become more of the standard and we'd see less and less of the PS3, PS4, PS5, PS6, PS7, etc. formula of consoles but I guess I don't understand that there's still plenty of market for dedicated gaming-only machines even when they cost about the same now as a general PC and are closer to just being PC themselves in terms of computing power.
Anyway, you did kinda get that PC version of Ys 7, just that it was coded by a Chinese team and not Falcom staff and now you'd have to learn Chinese.
That team has gotten better I hear and Falcom even took back one of their PC ports (It was Zero no Kiseki) and localized it to Japanese for sale in Japan.
