The music of Ys I & II
The music of Ys I & II
An incredibly influential title not just in gameplay, but on the audio side, and one ported to a number of systems with various limitations and strengths,.
This column is “The music of,” in which I’ll go into detail on the soundtrack or a piece of music from a video game. Previous entries in the series can be found through this link.
It’s a lot more difficult to notice in present-day platforms, but older video game consoles (and computers) had some serious differences in the sounds they produced. The sound chips in Nintendo’s SNES were different from those in Sega’s Genesis, which were both different from what was in NEC’s Turbografx, and because of this, the kinds of sounds and the direction music for those platforms ended up taking all differed, too. You know if you’ve spent any time with the system that there’s a Genesis-specific sound, and that sometimes, with ports from arcade or from the SNES, the audio and music could sound worse than in the versions it originated from, as in the case of something like Zombies Ate My Neighbors. When someone who knew what they were doing (or took the time if it was available in development) built a soundtrack from the ground up with the Genesis’ strengths and weaknesses in mind, though, the audio could shine.
The soundtrack for the first two Ys games, which were once released separately but inevitably paired together since they were parts of the same story, are an excellent lens through which to view this past. Nihon Falcom’s series debuted in the summer of 1987 with Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished, and was composed by Yuzo Koshiro, as was the sequel (Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished — The Final Chapter) that came out the following year. While Ys I was initially made for the PC-8801, it ended up ported basically everywhere it could be. Additional Japanese computer ports (X1, PC-9801, FM-7, MSX2, X68000), as well as international computers (DOS, Apple IIGS), and console ports to the Famicom and Master System all surfaced. Ys II also was ported all over the place, though, it didn’t end up on a Sega platform until it was part of a compilation for the Saturn in 1998, and Nintendo ended up waiting even longer.
That’s just the separate releases, though. As mentioned, the two would inevitably be paired together, as they were for the Turbografx CD/PC Engine CD release of Ys Book I & II, a practice that generally would continue from that point forward — multiple updated PC releases, a Nintendo DS version, Playstation 2, Playstation Portable, Android and iOS… you can play some version of Ys I and Ys II somewhere, and have been able to basically forever even if that hasn’t always been the case with either Ys or Falcom games in general.
Let’s start at the beginning. Koshiro very much produced music that fit not just the game he was making it for, but also the platform it was appearing on. The PC-8801/9801 lines of computers utilized the YM2608 sound chip, an FM synth chip produced by Yamaha. If you know anything about decades of Koshiro’s work, you are aware of his affinity for FM synth: the platform was a perfect match for his sensibilities, and his ideas about what Ys should sound like and the role music should play in the game(s) took care of the rest.
I’ve written often that one of the most successful things about Ys games — something that is noticeable in its rare absences — is how the music compels you forward, how it drives you to keep moving, to keep swinging that sword, to keep exploring, to keep on in general. That wasn’t an accident, but part of the process, as Koshiro himself explained in an interview, where he was asked about if the synchronization of the music and visuals was intentional (translation courtesy Shmuplations)
When I compose, I put a huge emphasis on the movement in the game. I'm really bad at writing music for games that don't have a lot of movement or animation. Or rather, I just find it boring. I like to analyze the movement, and then match my tempos and rhythms to what you see. I think on Ys, though, that synchronicity was more of a lucky coincidence rather than something I planned.
…
I write my music when the game is about 70% done, once there's things moving around on screen basically. In my experience, that approach yields the best results.
This makes it so that even when Adol Christin is in a cave and the music is more low-key compared to an open field or a boss encounter, there’s still a sound that’s driving you ever-forward and on. And as for those boss fights? Koshiro cranked up the volume and the speed, so you’d feel the intensity you needed for the occasion, so that the environment you were within sounded as frenetic as it appeared.
It accomplished all of this without the use of actual guitars or drums or what have you, relying on Koshiro’s own sound drivers that he developed for use with the PC-8801’s sound chip. Here’s First Step Towards Wars, the field music for Ys I, as it first sounded on the PC-88:
A driving theme, layered with multiple “instruments” going at once, and one that’s an excellent point of comparison for what various ports of Ys I sounded like on different platforms. The Famicom version of the game, for instance, sounds like a demake of Ys I’s soundtrack, just like arcade and computer games would take a step backwards visually when ported there:
What’s out in front in the PC-88 version of the track remains in front on the Famicom’s arrangement of it, but the drum/rhythm track is a little more prominent, maybe because there’s a little less going on with other instruments than in the PC-88 edition and there was space to fill: the Famicom had higher sound capabilities than its international cousin, the NES, but it had its own limitations to contend with all the same.
There are two different Sega Master System versions of Ys I’s soundtrack, owing to Sega’s Japanese and North American consoles coming with different sound chips — Japan’s used a Yamaha FM synth:
While internationally, only a Yamaha programmable sound chip (PSG) was utilized in the SMS, so the sound is significantly different even on what is otherwise the same hardware:
In either case, the backing drums are much, much more upfront and noticeable than in either the PC-88 or Famicom editions. This is the case with the Japanese FM synth version of First Step Towards Wars, even, despite Koshiro’s version of the song being made for a Yamaha FM synth chip as well. This emphasis on drum tracks is pretty standard Master System stuff — the original Phantasy Star says hello — but it’s still kind of jarring to hear how different it sounds from the other arrangements of the same song. Not bad! Just different, and noticeably so.
If you want to talk about different, though, then the emphasis should shift to entirely new ways to store audio. Regardless of what kind of sound chip was in a platform, or whether it had FM synth or not, games were limited by their storage. Only so much music could fit on a cartridge or disk, and in some cases, how the music even plays is a question. Koshiro also composed ActRaiser for the SNES, and in doing so, discovered an issue that required a solution: music samples on the SNES were limited to just 64KB, which meant programming a solution to allow for songs that were longer than that, as ActRaiser’s John Williams-inspired orchestral arrangements were. Basically, you can thank Quintet and Koshiro for much of the classic SNES music they didn’t even write, but the point is just that there always used to be some kind of limitation in place to be worked around or to submit to, often relating to storage in some way.
The advent of disc-based games (as opposed to disk-based games) changed much in terms of video game music and storage. A ROM of Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished on the Famicom, even with an English patch applied to it, comes in at 256KB. The total size for the Turbografx CD edition of Ys Book I & II’s various bin and images files comes in at 732MB: consider, for a moment, that requiring a special 1MB cartridge for a Famicom game nearly bankrupted HAL. And that the PC Engine CD edition of Ys I & II released two years before Metal Slader Glory did. CD storage was a real gamechanger.
Sure, some of that CD space went to enhanced visuals, and some went to incorporating voice acting that didn’t exist in the previous versions, but a not-insignificant portion of the storage space went to making First Step Towards War sound like this:
Without the FM synth focus, which instruments are which is clearer here, and everything sounds less video game-y, to use a professional term. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the originals — plenty of FM synth and chiptune music continues to rule today, and there are brand new games made using both all the time for more reasons than just nostalgia — but switching a game’s format to CD opened up different avenues for sound that went beyond which sound chip was in a system.
The Turbografx CD edition wasn’t the end of new arrangements, either. The Sega Saturn edition — also a CD format utilizing Red Book audio — changed once again, with, in typical Sega hardware fashion, more emphasis on the bass and fuller, higher-pitched synths than on the Turbografx CD:
For the Nintendo DS version — Legacy of Ys: Books I & II — the soundtrack ended up somewhere in between the old and the new, as the cartridges were capable of being much larger than anything that existed in the game’s heyday, but were still well short of CD storage sizes even at the high end. It’s not an exact comparison for a number of reasons, but considering the similarities for programming sound — neither the Nintendo 64 nor DS had dedicated sound chips — and comparable storage sizes for Legacy of Ys’ cartridge to what that system put out, think of it as akin to what Ys might have sounded like were it released on the N64, which saw a number of its titles successfully ported to this handheld for a reason:
The collision detection might have been a little iffy in Legacy of Ys, but the soundtrack did not miss.
Then there’s Ys I & II Chronicles, the updated PC release of the game that you can still get on Windows today. That version, which released in Japan in 2009 before coming to North America in 2013, emphasizes the guitars over everything else, as does basically the soundtrack as a whole:
Unsurprisingly, this version of the game is also the largest one, from a storage perspective. Again, much of that is the visuals, but, well, you heard the guitars.
A future edition of Ys I & II could once again be arranged differently, depending on the styles of the time, but it seems like Falcom Sound Team has already come… well, not full circle, since Koshiro did compose with the platform and FM synth sound of the PC-88 in mind, but at least has come back around to fully representing the soundtrack’s non-video game and computer musical influences: the driving rock music of the era. You don’t end up with a track like Over Drive by accident, without purpose and a knowledge of the genre in question:
That modern arrangement screams 80s thrash, yeah, but the original still went plenty hard, like it was meant to:
To this point everything has been about differences in sound over time, related to the hardware, but Ys and Koshiro even had a hand in influencing future hardware decisions. His imprint on the SNES was already mentioned — a nod to the future in programming and game development outside of “just” composing that he would take his studio, Ancient — but the sound of the PC-88, which Ys I and Ys II were flagship, landmark titles on, held sway with Sega. For the Genesis, they’d select from a different line of Yamaha’s FM synth chips than they had with the Master System, coming away with the YM2612, which was not the direct successor to the PC-88’s YM2608, but was part of the OPN family of FM synth chips produced by Yamaha, just like the YM2608.
Koshiro played a massive role in the sound of the Genesis, both in terms of his influence on other composers and series — listen to Ys I & II’s music for towns and shops, then listen to what various Phantasy Star games on the Genesis did in similar situations, and it’s pretty easy to see what Sega’s own composers were into. And you don’t even have to guess at a relationship there considering Koshiro and Sega worked together on projects like Streets of Rage 2 and Beyond Oasis, and Koshiro’s familiarity with the hardware, and legacy attached to it, is such that he ended up handling the menu themes for both of the Sega Genesis Mini consoles.
Nintendo went in their own direction with sound between the SNES and N64, and the industry at large headed toward CD storage and Red Book audio in the years in between disks, cartridges, and DVDs, but for a brief time there, there was plenty of influence on making games that sounded just as good, and in a similar style, as of that of Ys. And while the nature of that sound has changed for even Falcom over the years, in terms of the technology they compose for, the original spirit of Ys — its hard-driving, adrenaline-releasing themes that match what’s happening on screen and compel it forward — remain. And with good reason.
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