Nihon Falcom’s Toshihiro Kondo On A Trails Of Azure Localization, Special Memories Of Ys VIII, And Which Ys IV Is ‘The Best Version Of That Game’

Siliconera recently had the opportunity to speak with Nihon Falcom President Toshihiro Kondo about The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel entries and the company’s games as a whole. While the first part of our interview talked about the upcoming The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III and what led to certain elements, this second parts goes over other games like the possibility of Trails of Azure, the PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Vita, and PC entry, being localized, thoughts on different Ys games, and the possibility of older Nihon Falcom games being made available for modern audiences to play.

Siliconera: With Trails in the Sky and Trails of Cold Steel getting localizations, will we ever see a Trails of Azure localization?

Toshihiro Kondo: As time passes, games stop being released for certain consoles and handhelds, and the games on those platforms become more and more difficult to play. In particular, we want to address this need for those games that only came out on PC or on a handheld, and bring them to modern consoles. Once we’ve done that, it will be easier to bring them out to the West.

Could people ever end up seeing a Trails of Cold Steel complete collection for the Nintendo Switch?

I don’t know if it will necessarily be for the Switch, but I would like there to be a compilation like that in the future.

Nihon Falcom games tend to get ported to multiple platforms. How does the company decide which games will eventually receive ports and pick platforms for them?

Generally, we receive proposals for porting from other companies. Naturally, it would make more sense that we do these ports ourselves, however, our main focus at Falcom is creating new titles, and at the moment, it is most efficient to leave the porting to other companies with more experience in those areas. I think this style will continue for the time being.

Nihon Falcom had always been a strong supporter of Sony handhelds. Which PlayStation Portable or PlayStation Vita of one of your games was your favorite and what made it so special?

Given my position, I can’t really play favorites with our titles, and I have unique memories of each one. But, I guess the titles nearest to me are the ones I directly worked on, so in that regard, I have a lot of special memories of Ys VIII.

Which version of Ys IV do you find most technically and mechanically interesting?

This is going to sound a bit self-congratulatory, but Memories of Celceta offers gameplay that neither of the other versions have. Even though Adol had already journeyed through the forests of Celceta, he had lost his memories, so this was a good opportunity to introduce Adol to players who might not have played an Ys game before. We thought carefully about how to use this system to make the game appealing to new users, as well as longtime Ys fans. For these reasons, I think Celceta is the best version of that game.

With retro games getting a second life, thanks to digital distribution, plug-and-play consoles, and remasters, could we ever see Nihon Falcom resurrect games like Gurumin, Popful Mail, or Vantage Master?

We are always thinking of how to bring our past titles to people today. While we don’t know if we are able to do this for everything, there are already some things that we are working on, so please look forward to more information to come.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III will come to the PlayStation 4 in North America and Europe on October 22, 2019. This comes after a recent one month delay. It is immediately available on the PlayStation 4 in Japan.