I don't wanna be too much of a naysayer, but personally no I don't think so. The rise in discussion around Adol and Ys came in response to Terry blindsiding most of the community, and speculating on which other smaller scale, legacy Japanese companies may be viable. And from that perspective, Nihon Falcom is a fair place to go. I would rather invite this kind of conversation than shut it out, it's better than staying locked into AAA stuff and the usual suspects.
On the other hand though, I don't think Ys is quite comparable to Fatal Fury or King of Fighters. I think when we discuss SNK's relative size, it's easy to neglect just how important of a staple they were to Japanese arcades and beyond. The more lowkey significance of Ys feels a bit too segregated from what we've seen so far for me to really be confident in them gunning for it. It's still not a super recognizable series on a worldwide scale and there are a number of other RPG series that I think may join the conversation first. I'm glad that a good conversation can arise from seldom discussed classic characters, but sometimes the pieces just don't quite come together for me.
If we did end up getting a Falcom character, I could see there being some competition for Ys from the also highly acclaimed Trails series. Although it seems like people who know more about these games than I do have spoken on that already.
I think you're coming from a fair place, but I do also think you're downplaying Falcom's significance a bit here. You mention how significant SNK is to the arcade scene as a point of comparison, and rightfully so, but it's worth noting Falcom really were an
incredibly important developer in their own field of Japanese PC gaming. Like, one of the absolute top dogs of that scene, pumping out popular games for a long time, and they've had a
massive influence on the course of the JRPG as well (their early successes are right up there with the likes of Tower of Druaga in terms of being highly influential templates on action RPGs in particular). They're incredibly beloved in Japan, with titles like Ys, Xanadu and Sorcerian being considered classics (I believe Xanadu was, for a long time, one of if not
the highest-selling Japanese PC game) and the Trails series having a large following as well. If we were to go for that sort of niche-but-influential type choice, I think Falcom are as valid a pick as any, and I think when taking into account what the two companies brought to their respective fields, they aren't
that far apart from SNK in terms of significance, relatively speaking. The points against it I think would be that A. we don't have a
ton of precedent for Smash turning its attention towards computer gaming, and B. their niche status in the west. The former I think is just a case of "if it happens, it happens", I don't think there's much to be discussed there, but the second one is admittedly more valid. I guess I'll say here that I do think that, although still niche, they've been slowly but surely gaining popularity over here - just from anecdotal experience I
have seen plenty of people talking about their games these days, though it's worth noting the vast majority of it's been about Trails rather than Ys. I think at the very least the former is
decently well-known at this point, though the original conversation was about Ys, and I do think that one falters a bit more in this regard, so I think you have a point there. I guess it's just a matter of "would this be something they'd reasonably see value in pushing", and I don't have the answer for that.
