"Falcom has never worked on Ys IV directly on the development side," Toshihiro Kondo said in an interview with Siliconera. "Those games were made by other companies using Falcom’s intellectual property. For close to 20 years, we’ve been hearing from fans they would like to see a Falcom developed Ys IV."

That may be a surprise for new Falcom fans, but it’s true. Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys was developed by Hudson for the TurboDuo and Ys IV: Mask of the Sun was a project from Tonkin House.

Following in the footsteps of Ys: The Oath in Felghana, Ys Celceta: Sea of Trees is a re-imagining of Ys IV made for PlayStation Vita. "The subtitle is related to Adol’s adventures in Ys IV," Kondo explained. In Sea of Trees, Adol begins the game without his memories and the story will explore how he came to become an adventurer. Ys: Sea of Trees will use a battle system similar to Ys Seven where you will have a party of characters to control.

"When Sony first approached us about the PlayStation Vita and showed us what the hardware was capable of, there were things we could not do in Ys Seven that we now know we can do on PlayStation Vita. This is why we decided to make this game for PlayStation Vita," Kondo added.

But, why did Falcom decide to re-imagine Ys IV instead of making say Ys Eight or another title? "The new fans that found out about Falcom through our PSP releases don’t know Ys IV. Even the older Ys fans, as I explained earlier, have been asking us to create our own Ys IV. This seemed like a good way to satisfy both customer bases," said Kondo.

Here’s the question perhaps burning for overseas fans — will Ys Celceta: Sea of Trees be released in North America. "That is something we will have to discuss with Xseed’s president when he meets with us at the end of the month," Kondo answered.

Note: We originally referred to this game as Ys IV: Woodland of Celceta, but will be calling it Ys Celceta: Sea of Trees from here on out.