Let's try a thread about an old game again...

Let's try a thread about an old game again, now that I've dug up an old-ass game materials album about Falcom's Xanadu and its monster designs. Maybe some history, too.

Other urls found in this thread:

pastebin.com/G2mswYCt
theisozone.com/downloads/pc/windows-games/xanadu-next-japeng-patch-included/
hardcoregaming101.net/tracing/tracing5.htm
scribd.com/doc/48188850/The-Official-Book-of-Ultima#page=90
youtube.com/watch?v=Nmm3cwFeUbI
youtube.com/watch?v=LeYS7kG-Uoo
youtube.com/watch?v=iFIXuwhJRgo
youtube.com/watch?v=GSs-_I6-8eA
youtube.com/watch?v=-gOiXqm67Ec
youtube.com/watch?v=RJwM7dsuPDs
youtube.com/watch?v=PJRzNxYRXnE
youtube.com/watch?v=2XYvHIr1lAI
youtube.com/watch?v=M96RkSBHxjE
youtube.com/watch?v=aIXlqAcyTbg
youtube.com/watch?v=6p6OmuzLcLA
youtube.com/watch?v=A1Vh4DUX5bc
youtube.com/watch?v=4rvEOSZNrSo
youtube.com/watch?v=dA3t52mR4QQ
youtube.com/watch?v=mE3frS2IN7M
youtube.com/watch?v=D16oNaYDW88
youtube.com/watch?v=MDh0_I9SB2E
twitter.com/AnonBabble

I also realize that this is /vr/ material but I wanna give this one more try here.

These particular images come from the Xanadu Visual Collection CD from 1995, bundled with Revival Xanadu.

Some of the images are a bit too big to post on Sup Forums so I won't post all 81 images from the CD.

For that, visit the Falcom Pastebin and look under Scans.

pastebin.com/G2mswYCt

Interestingly, this CD is filled with Kodak PhotoCD format images, so I ran these through a converter to PNG. I can't be fussed to convert some of these to some just-under-the-threshold size.

The game covers and advertisements star miniatures by Kow Yokoyama, who is a pretty cool artist. He also used the 'make plastic miniatures into a game cover' technique for Sorcerian.

An example, from Revival Xanadu's front cover.

It's nice to know people were releasing CDs with high resolution image data on them even as far back as 1995 - these images are all 3072x2048. Must have taken forever to deal with on a computer back then.

Diglett?

...

QUADS

A side note: Xanadu is the second game in the 'Dragon Slayer' series by Falcom.

It resulted in the eventual creation of 'Faxanadu' which you might have remembered a Captain N episode about, or played on the NES.

To expand upon this:

The famous Dragon Slayer series went on for several more iterations afterwards.

Dragon Slayer birthed Xanadu (DS2,) Romancia (DS3,) Drasle Family (DS4, also known as Legacy of the Wizard here in the west) and Sorcerian (DS5.)

The sixth game, Dragon Slayer: Legend of Heroes, brings me to my next discussion.

not enough english games

That sixth game became its own sub-series, the "Legend of Heroes" franchise.

LOH 2 was a sequel to 1, but LOH3-5 were set in another world entirely, and are referred to as the 'Gagharv trilogy' for the setting they are placed in.

And then, Legend of Heroes 6 came out.

This game was named Legend of Heroes 6: Sora no Kiseki.

This game's other name was Trails in the Sky, in the west.

I'm getting to that.

LoH6 became its own trilogy, over time.

Trails in the Sky First Chapter, Second Chapter and The 3rd became a renaissance for the company. SC ended up being a beloved title, and The 3rd was a nice epilogue that could be neatly separated from the FC/SC duology, starring Kevin the priest from the first two games, but it lead to major story revelations that opened up many possibilities.

The two PC Engine Xanadu games are going to be released as fan translated and dubbed sometime this year - though aside from the name they don't have much to do with Xanadu.

Legend of Xanadu was the last game the "Dragon Slayer" series director worked on at Falcom. As a nostalgic touch it's subtitled "The Last Dragon Slayer"

Then, another duology came into being.

This was Legend of Heroes 7: Zero no Kiseki and Ao no Kiseki. The current tentative localized name is 'Trails of Zero' and 'Trails of Azure' and have not been released in the west.

This means that, essentially, all three games in the "Sky" series were considered the 6th Legend of Heroes.

The eighth Legend of Heroes is still being made.

That would be The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel I, II and III.

1 and 2 were released here in the west most recently, and CS3 is in production for PS4 as we speak.

As for the Xanadu series, to loop around to the beginning of this thread, a full graph can be seen in the image accompanying this post.

Can't wait for those. I've waited so long to play them in English.

Anyway, back to images.

Falcom, thankfully, is very conscious of the old art and production works they keep around the office.

In fact, they recently posted a bunch of 'clean' versions of art they've used for various promotional materials or for album covers on Twitter.

A link for this is also on the pastebin from earlier in the thread.

Where's the titties

I also ended up creating a repository of every single high-quality iTunes album art Falcom's uploaded for their iTunes releases, so that's on there too. Was bored a few nights ago and saved like 181 images by hand using the iTunes art grabber thing.

I might as well talk about some upcoming uploads to the pastebin, as well.

I will be uploading a couple ISOs and scans to the bin, but the big one I have coming my way is 'Xanadu Motion Picture Soundtrack,' since it's a CD that has music previously only exclusive available on one particular Falcom related vinyl/CD I don't think I'll ever get. That one was for the OVA.

This good enough for ya?

It feels kind of pointless to bother, but I'm also seeing what I can do about adding more drama CDs. I am not fluent in Japanese so I earn no particular benefit from hosting these myself, but I at least feel good about preserving history.

I got a friend of mine to send me a Nayuta no Kiseki drama CD and put it up, just because.

Anyone else still browsing? Just curious, since I posted this here and not /vr/ because I wanted to spruce this place up a little bit.

The actual mdf+mds for this CD's also on the pastebin, not just the art, with scans of the box itself rather than just the CD data.

Intriguing read, not much games in English however.

Thanks for this thread user. Faxanadu was probably one of my favourite games of all time. It got my hooked on adventure platformers like wonderboy.

Is there any other games in the series like faxanadu?

more like xaNADu. like nads.

i have faxanadu for my NES and thought it was a stand alone game

that feel when finding out it's a game series with like fucking 20 games

why the FUCK are 90% of threads dying when i comment in them? am i cursed, what the fuck Sup Forums

It's not your fault. My last version of this thread died too.

The OST for Legend of Xanadu came with the Falcom 2004 Special Box.

welp, nice try OP, i guess it just wasn't ment to be

i mean, just looked this up and since i know faxanadu i wouldn't really want to start at the beginning since faxanadu itself was kind of boring and sometimes cryptic

where would one even start? are the some metroidvanias in the series really worth playing, like, being as good as super castlevania IV or even better?

>Could have had a bunch more of these games if falcom didnt get caught red handed stealing wizardy art

Xanadu Next is on steam and a really good game. It's also standalone. Give it a shot.

looks good, just not 19,99 good

I dunno much about Xanadu, but I do dig Falcom's whole aesthetic and how they were basically the kings of the Japanese PC gaming scene during the 80s and 90s. I'm on the fence about trying Xanadu Next after being a big fan of the Ys games for a couple years.

only waifu threads live

Tell us more

Do that thing pirates claim they do and buy it if you like it.

theisozone.com/downloads/pc/windows-games/xanadu-next-japeng-patch-included/

The images
hardcoregaming101.net/tracing/tracing5.htm

The story
scribd.com/doc/48188850/The-Official-Book-of-Ultima#page=90

Do you like playing a game sort of like Nox or Diablo, but with a Dark Souls like usage-based magic that recharges in town and metroidvania style exploration with items that help you traverse certain areas? Xanadu Next is for you, then.

Amusingly, a lot of the shopkeeper graphics in the original releases were traced from the manual for Ultima III, which caused an especially awkward moment when Falcom demoed the game to Origin in search of American publishers. (The complete comparisons can be seen in our Tracing the Influence feature. Subsequent ports changed them completely. Ultimately the game never found a publisher outside of Japan, though for non-Japanese speakers it doesn't really matter, since most of the text in the game is in English anyway.)

I haven't played it in forever but Faxanadu was the absolute best shit when I was a kid. I'm kind of afraid to go back to it though for fear of having my memories ruined.

I know a few of these have official localizations (Faxanadu, Sorcerian, Legacy of the Wizard, the PSP Legend of Heroes games, Trails in the Sky, Trails of Cold Steel, etc). But how many have serviceable translation patches?

Also, which subseries' gameplay do you prefer? Cause I understand that they all play differently

wich xanadu shopkeeper is ur waifu

Going back to Sorcerian is really weird, especially since it has this scrolling backgrounds issue in Forever with the high quality art that makes it look very strange.

I think I'm boring and prefer Cold Steel's, the newest's, combat. The best in series history IMO, even if it's nothing crazy unique or fanciful.

As for translations of the Dragon Slayer subseries, avoid Nayuta no Kiseki's. It's google translate tier. Zero is getting fan translated now by people who actually give a fuck and know Japanese, so we might see something really good there (see: Gu4n being on the team.)

Interesting thread. I can't stick around, but I wanted you to have a bump in exchange for this dump.

That's interesting

Also it's worth noting the PSP LOH games localized by Bandai Namco (the Gagharv trilogy aka LOH3-5) are not very well translated at all.

I like the clay pictures

I feel like you might've had a better time with this thread on /vr/. Even though, I fucking love the aesthetics of old Japanese computer games. Nothing like them.

I'd hit her any key if you get my meaning.

Thanks for the feedback. Threads like this are what continue to give me hope Sup Forums can be good again.

...

...

As you can see here, this image became the box art for Revival Xanadu 2.

Dem old ads.

They posted this on their twitter a few days ago, so Falcom clearly has some of this stuff still floating around the office.

Only Xanadu game I've played is this one.

I played many of the Trails games those being FC/SC and CS I & II.

Need to play more of Brandish on my psp.

I haven't touched the original Xanadu, but Xanadu NEXT is my second-favourite Falcom game.

Oracle a best

Also, I might as well post the Falcom update from most recently while I keep this thread up!

falcom pastebin update!

pastebin.com/G2mswYCt

Trails of Cold Steel III (Sen no Kiseki III) Dengeki and Famitsu Scan Info April 2017
I rescanned these at higher resolution than the ones that have been going around!
Cold Steel III Wallpapers (Weeks 1-6 currently) (These are 4K wallpapers, Musse went up yesterday on the site)

I also added issues 46-74 of Falcom Magazine in PDF form since Falcom sends those out now!

Vantage Master SC-88 & Pro (SCVA)[FLAC]
Lord Monarch First&Original General MIDI Soundtrack (SCVA)[FLAC]
Mona2 Monarch Monarch General MIDI Soundtrack (SCVA)[FLAC]
Mona2 Monarch Monarch Unused Music (XG and SC88Pro VSTi)[FLAC]
Sorcerian Forever General MIDI Soundtrack (SCVA)[FLAC]
Legend of Heroes III -first part- General MIDI Soundtrack
Legend of Heroes III -second part- General MIDI Soundtrack
THE LEGEND OF HEROES III Windows Version SC-88 MIDI Soundtrack
THE LEGEND OF HEROES IV Windows/PC-98 Version (SC-88 & SC-88Pro) MIDI Soundtrack
The Legend of Heroes V General MIDI Soundtrack (SCVA)[FLAC]
The Legend of Heroes III White Witch (PSP New Arrange)[FLAC]
The Legend of Heroes IV A Tear of Vermilion (PSP New Arrange)[FLAC]
The Legend of Heroes V A Cagesong of the Ocean (PSP New Arrange)[FLAC]
Ys I & II Complete (SC-88 SCVA)[FLAC]
Brandish 4 General MIDI Soundtrack (SCVA) [FLAC]
Brandish 4 Image Soundtrack (GM & SC88Pro SCVA)[FLAC]
Xanadu Sound Collection [FLAC]
[EAC] We Love Sora no Kiseki - Falcom Sound Team jdk [FLAC+cue+log]
Xanadu Visual Collection [mdf+mds+scans].7z 161.4 MB
Brandish 2 Glossary, Manual and World Map
-NAYUTA NO KISEKI DRAMA CD ~Yoake no Hoshi~

Damn, that's a huge pastebin of neat stuff. Did you get all these links yourself? Are you from the Falcom general on /vg/?

I was wondering why the shopkeepers looked so weird

All of those are my own personal reuploads after several years of either buying CDs to rip myself, grabbing lossless rips off of obscure Chinese sites, or begging people to help me out with some of the more expensive and obscure ones.

Currently searching for Sorcerian Rare Selections, and I have Xanadu Motion Picture Soundtrack on its way to my house. Don't want to pay 400 dollars for Sorcerian Complete just for the fucking CD.

And yes, that was me posting the updates.

That dude's hair looks more dangerous than his sword.

Wow, that's a lot of stuff

What is your favorite non-Ys OST?

Good thread OP

What's funny is you can name him in the JP version but he's nameless in the US.

You recognize a great thread when you see one.

youtube.com/watch?v=Nmm3cwFeUbI

I only played xanadu next, what else should I try?

Hard to say. Probably Brandish VT/Brandish 4's, especially VT on PC98.

youtube.com/watch?v=LeYS7kG-Uoo
^^Pro click

youtube.com/watch?v=iFIXuwhJRgo
youtube.com/watch?v=GSs-_I6-8eA
youtube.com/watch?v=-gOiXqm67Ec
youtube.com/watch?v=RJwM7dsuPDs
youtube.com/watch?v=PJRzNxYRXnE

youtube.com/watch?v=2XYvHIr1lAI
^^Pro click

youtube.com/watch?v=M96RkSBHxjE

Fun facts about Brandish:

This song from Brandish 2, Gadobadorrer, was a MASSIVE inspiration for Megalovania from Undertale and Toby Fox even admitted it.

Take a listen:

youtube.com/watch?v=aIXlqAcyTbg
youtube.com/watch?v=6p6OmuzLcLA

That is some good music. Back tingle stuff.

You won't believe how good the older games sound, too:

youtube.com/watch?v=A1Vh4DUX5bc
youtube.com/watch?v=4rvEOSZNrSo
youtube.com/watch?v=dA3t52mR4QQ
youtube.com/watch?v=mE3frS2IN7M
youtube.com/watch?v=D16oNaYDW88
youtube.com/watch?v=MDh0_I9SB2E

The same sort of atmosphere, but with way lower tech.

This music is my aesthetic.

Music's fine and all but checking out some gameplay videos I can honestly say they're too retro for me. I love Falcom but nowadays I can't get into the older games especially considering the amazing reboots/remakes this company is making for said games.

I also get the nostalgia factor and appreciating the newer games more by seeing the older ones but in the end I just cant bring myself to play.

Well they are incredibly archaic. Basically the first action RPGs ever made.

Anything action-oriented on the PC88/98 is a chore to play because of the choppy scrolling and animation

But pretty much everything has gotten remade for different platforms. Ys in particular has been ported to just about everything under the sun.

So is the game art. Brandish VT pictured.

That, and the remake of Ys III, Oath in Felghana, is one of the greatest remakes in all gaming history.

Oh yeah totally.

All Brandish games on the PC-98 play pretty damn well, I'd say. Popful Mail PC-98 is also pretty nice and is my favorite version of the game.

I really need to play Xanadu next, I know Faxanadu was pretty much a spinoff but I fucking love that game.