I owned the 3rd one for the Genesis. It wasn't so bad, just really hard if I remember. It's probably in a box somewhere.

I never played it but remember seeing it. All I remember is wondering if it was pronounced "eee/yees" or just how you say "Y" plural.

Yeah, YS was a Zelda-clone, but a more sophisticated one with better graphics (even on the Sega Master System version, which, obviously, doesn't compete graphically with the Turbo-CD version).

I'm not qualified to say whether slightly better graphics and more complex gameplay makes the original YS a better game overall than the original LEGEND OF ZELDA, but YS was certainly one of games in the Sega Master System library that made me content to own the underdog system in the 8-bit wars.

I get the feeling that Popful Mail is their best game. I say 'get the feeling' because you can kind of see the ghost of what it was before Victor Ireland put his sweaty fingers all over it.

Yes. Ruins theme was the best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqJx-6CifQA

The only other thing I remember from Ys III was what a skill free grind fest it was. All you could really do was stand in front of dude pressing the attack button and hope your level was high enough to kill him before he killed you. So it was all about spending hours grinding.

Luckily there was a spot or two you could park yourself in and hold down the attack button to kill an infinitely respawning enemy who could never hit you. Put a weight on the attack button, go watch a movie, come back and you're a high enough level to breeze through the game.

Popful Mail is my favorite Falcom game, though they didn't have much to do with the Sega CD version. That was mostly Sega and Working Designs. And even if you hate ol' Victor Ireland (and I don't), Popful is one of his best localizations. Gags about Euro-Disney and The Power of Soup fit nicely into a game with cartoon penguins and mages named Muttonhead.

Speaking of music, when's the last time there was really good original music in a game? I don't play a lot of games these days, but I played through Red Dead Redemption, and I liked the music, but it's either indie singers like Jose Gonzales or Bill Elm's Calexico side project, so that doesn't really count because they do that music anyway. I mean just a really great theme that isn't already a song, or isn't composed by some famous composer for a big-budget game.

Recent big titles have been more about ambient music than memorable themes.

Best original I can think of is Jets n Guns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV4smGddYS4

Nier had some amazing music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZzMyxDgdQ4

Drakengard 3 did as well, but it was more of a messy, pseudo-industrial mix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llGOobmaNrY

You know, that actually sounds Falcom-esque.