Nihon Falcom Corporation ( 日本ファルコム株式会社 ) is a Japanese company that creates video games. It is most famous for developing the Ys, The Legend of Heroes, and Trails series. The company helped create the action role-playing game and Japanese role-playing game genres. It also helped make personal computers more popular in Japan.

History

Nihon Falcom was founded by Masayuki Kato in 1981. The company helped start the action role-playing and Japanese role-playing game genres. The name Falcom came from the Millennium Falcon; the "n" was changed to an "m" to match naming trends of the time. The word Nihon, a native name for Japan, was added to make the name sound complete.

Falcom's first role-playing game (RPG) was Panorama Toh, released for the PC-8801 in 1983. Yoshio Kiya created the game and later developed the Dragon Slayer and Brandish franchises. While Panorama Toh had limited RPG features, such as no traditional leveling systems, it included real-time combat with a gun, which was close to the action RPG style Falcom later became known for. The game took place on a desert island, with a map shown as a hex grid and a day-night cycle. Players could interact with indigenous non-player characters (NPCs) by attacking, talking, or giving money for items. NPCs could also run away with the money. To survive, players had to find and eat food, as every action used health points. The island had traps that required help from NPCs, and players could be poisoned or paralyzed by snakes, needing medicine or NPC help to recover.

Falcom later created major franchises, including Dragon Slayer, The Legend of Heroes, and Ys. The original Dragon Slayer set the standard for the action role-playing genre. Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu (1985) sold over 400,000 copies, becoming the best-selling PC game at the time.

Most of Falcom's games have been released on various video game consoles, but the company developed few non-PC games. This focus on PCs made Falcom different from rivals like Enix and Square, but limited its popularity in the West and growth in the 1990s. By the early 2010s, the Ys series was the second-largest Japanese role-playing game franchise, after Final Fantasy, in terms of total game releases.

In 1991, Falcom worked with Sega to create a joint company called Sega Falcom Inc., with Sega owning 55% and Falcom 45%. The company aimed to develop CD-based games for Sega's consoles to help Sega compete in the 16-bit market. A series of news updates titled "Sega Falcom News" appeared in Beep! MegaDrive from 1991 to 1994. Games made by Sega Falcom included Popful Mail for the Mega-CD and Lord Monarch: Tokoton Sentou Densetsu, Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes, and Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes II for the Mega Drive. In 2007, Toshihiro Kondo became president, succeeding Masayuki Kato.

Falcom was also an early leader in video game music, with early soundtracks composed by chiptune musicians Yuzo Koshiro and Mieko Ishikawa.