Nihon Falcom Corp.

About

A Japan based development company who are known for the first Japanese RPG, as well as their adventure games and fully developed sound tracks.

Formed in 1981 by Masayuki Kato, Nihon Falcom (日本ファルコッム in Japanese) was responsible for considerable growth in the Japanese computer game market and created some of the best selling titles from the early days of the industry, such as Dragon Slayer and Xanadu. Unlike many game companies in the 1980's, Falcom refrained from moving development to the Nintendo's Famicom or other home consoles of the time and instead continued to develop for personal computers almost exclusively for many years.

While a number of Falcom's past titles were ported to home consoles and portable systems, they were mostly handled by companies other than Falcom, such as Hudson, Bandai Namco and Konami. However, with the loss of their PC distributor in Japan during the early 2000s and the declining sales in the market, Falcom has since stopped all PC development and now only creates console and handheld titles.

Falcom is famous in Japan for a number of its franchises, including Xanadu, Brandish, Ys, and the Legend of Heroes (who's Trails sub-series has since become to company's most popular property). However, due to their once heavy emphasis on Japanese PC development, the company was largely unknown in the West until recently when localization companies such as XSEED, Aksys and NIS America began publishing their games overseas.

External link

Chronicles of Ys: A Series Retrospective, Eurogamer