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After eight years the Ys IV fan dub is complete

A lot of games that have never been released in English could be lost forever to us gaijin who don't read Japanese. Thanks to the efforts of fan translators (fanslators), many of gaming's "white whales" have become playable to English speakers in the west. Before Square Enix officially released Dragon Quest V on DS in the states, playing it required a fan translation unless you could read Japanese. At least for now, it looks like we'll never get an official localization of Mother 3. Fan translators do a noble service to gamers everywhere.

Now, one of the most ambitious fanslation projects in history has finally come to fruition. After an eight-year process, fan translator Burnt Lasagna has released a complete English voice dub for Ys IV: Dawn of Ys.

Over the last couple years, the Ys series has regained relevance in the west thanks to the efforts of publisher XSEED, but there was a long period of time during which not so much as a single entry came to the US. After getting the first three games in the Falcom-developed series on several consoles in the late 80s and early 90s, North America wouldn't see another Ys game until 2005's Ys: the Ark of Napishtim. The first game to not make it over here was Ys IV.

IV had previously been translated by fanslator NightWolve, but that was just the text. Now you can play Ys IV: Dawn of Ys fully voice acted, just as if Falcom had released it for the TurboGrafx-16 years ago.

The Ys series has a long and convoluted history, but Ys IV has a special distinction. The Ys games may have seen release from many, many publishers over the years, but they've all been developed by Falcom. That is, all of them except for Ys IV. There were two versions of IV, one on PC Engine and the other on Super Famicom, but both were handled by different companies and therefore considered by Falcom to be non-canon. Today Falcom released Ys Celceta: Sea of Trees for Vita in Japan, which will take the place of Dawn in the official timeline. But that doesn't make the original fourth installment any less fun.

Check out the fully voice-acted Ys IV: Dawn of Ys and finally get a chance to enjoy this lost gem just as Vic Ireland would want. Make sure you import a legal copy first, of course!

Reported by Matthew Jay

Source: http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=13136.0

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