ANCIENT LAND OF YS 

 Here's something a bit different from Kyodai/Broderbund Software: 
an action/fantasy game that incorporates an almost complete
arcade-style interface. What's different about ANCIENT LAND OF YS is
that it comes from Japan, courtesy of a company that's dedicated to
bringing Japan's greatest hits to North America. (This review is
based on the IBM-PC version.) 

 Most segments of YS are handled in an arcade style. For example, to
fight an enemy, you run into him. There are no swing, parry, or
defend commands; you just bump the enemy. Because the game depends
mostly on action, there isn't much problem-solving to do, which
quickly leads to boredom. The unoriginal plot involves going out, 
hunting down the evil wizard, and getting rid of the evil wizard. 
Basically, this is accomplished by building your character's stats, 
finding items that are necessary to your quest, and killing the bad
guys. 

 Your character is a warrior named Arick who must defeat Malificus. 
Malificus has stolen the six Books of Ys and is now using their
powers to wreak havoc among the natives. You start out in the town
of Minea. From here you journey across the land exploring temples, 
mines, villages, and towers. Oh, yes...fighting: There's quite a bit
of that. (Maybe Japanese game players need more evil wizards, but we
sure don't.) 

 The graphics are fair. The people are small, so you can't really
make out any detail. Some of the monsters are drawn very poorly: The
Kaenine, which is supposed to be a dog-wolf, looks like a stick
horse. However, the scenic graphics -- trees, landscape, water, and
mountains -- look good. VGA/EGA mode is quite satisfactory, but CGA
is not. On the back of the package, there is a small note regarding
the "award-winning musical score." Obviously, Kyodai doesn't
understand the limits of the IBM's sound capability. The sound that
crawls out of the small speaker is certainly not what I'd call
"award-winning." Since YS does not support any of the new sound
cards, the noise won't get any better than this. 

 ANCIENT LAND OF YS comes with disks in both 5-1/4" and 3-1/2" 
formats. It runs on IBM or 100% compatibles, and supports CGA, EGA, 
VGA, Tandy 16-color, and Hercules graphics modes. MS-DOS or PC-DOS
2.1 or higher is required, along with 384K of free RAM. YS uses both
the keyboard and joystick for control. The joystick works much
better than the keyboard for navigating within the game. YS relies
on key-disk copy protection, and can be installed on a hard drive. 

 YS is entertaining for a brief period of time, but I quickly became
bored with it. The graphics are unimpressive (although you won't go
blind), and the sound is terrible. If you like arcade/fantasy
games, you might enjoy YS. But if you're a hardcore CRPG player who
wants an interesting game that'll last for months, look elsewhere. 

 ANCIENT LAND OF YS is published by Kyodai and distributed by
Broderbund. 

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253