After 37 years, one of the most influential JRPGs of all time is finally being rereleased in its original form - but there's a catch

The original version of Ys, one of the most influential JRPGs ever created, is finally getting a proper rerelease that's likely to launch worldwide - but it might not be in your native language.

Ys 1 - or as the original title screen calls it, Ancient Ys Vanished Omen - was first released for the Japanese PC-88 computer series way back in 1987. It stood out at the time for its action driven 'bump' combat system, where you basically just bump into enemies in the overworld and either deal or receive damage based on your positioning and stats. The system works surprisingly well, giving Ys a breezy pace that's unusual in RPGs today and darn near unheard of back in the '80s.

Since the PC-88 was primarily marketed and sold in Japan, the original version of Ys was never released in other territories. And, despite the fact that Ys would go on to become a well-loved series among JRPG fans worldwide, that PC-88 version never got a meaningful rerelease to introduce it to modern fans.

That's about to change, thanks to publisher D4 Enterprise's delightfully named EGGCONSOLE series of PC-88 rereleases on Switch. As noted by gosokkyu (via Time Extension), the original Ys is the next entry in that series. Currently, the release has only been announced for Japan, but given how many other far more obscure EGGCONSOLE titles have been released worldwide, it seems unlikely a game as notable as Ys will skip a global launch.

But don't expect it to be translated. Ys has a decent amount of Japanese text, as you'd expect for an RPG, and other EGGCONSOLE games have not gotten English translations even when they've been released worldwide. That doesn't matter much for the simple arcade-style titles that make up most of the series, but even more text-driven games like Marchen Veil still seem to be Japanese-only.

Of course, if you want to experience the story of Ys without regard to its original historical context, you've got plenty of options. Ys 1 has been remade several times over, typically