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 making the Ys, The Legend of Heroes, and Trails game series. The company is known for starting the action role-playing and Japanese role-playing game genres. It also helped make personal computers more widely used in Japan.

History

Nihon Falcom was started in 1981 by Masayuki Kato. The company helped create the beginnings of the action role-playing and Japanese role-playing game genres. The name "Falcom" comes from the Millennium Falcon, but the "n" was changed to an "m" to match naming styles from that time. The word "Nihon," which is one of the names 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. It was created by Yoshio Kiya, who later developed the Dragon Slayer and Brandish series. While the game had limited RPG features, such as no traditional leveling systems, it included real-time combat with a gun, which was similar to the action RPG style Falcom later became known for. The game took place on a desert island, where the overworld was shown as a grid of hexagons and had a day-night cycle. Players could interact with indigenous non-player characters (NPCs) by attacking, talking, or giving them money for items. NPCs could also run away with the money. To survive, players had to find and eat rations, as every action used hit points. The island had traps that required NPCs for help, and players could be poisoned or paralyzed by snakes, which needed medicine or NPC assistance to heal.

Falcom later created major game series, including Dragon Slayer, The Legend of Heroes, and Ys. The original Dragon Slayer helped define the action role-playing genre. Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu (1985) sold over 400,000 copies, making it 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 games for non-PC platforms. This focus on PCs made Falcom different from its competitors, Enix and Square, but limited its popularity in the West and its growth in the 1990s. By the early 2010s, the Ys series was second only to Final Fantasy in the number of Japanese RPG releases.

In 1991, Falcom co-founded a joint venture with Sega called Sega Falcom Inc., where Sega owned 55% and Falcom owned 45%. The company aimed to create CD-based games for Sega consoles to help Sega compete in the 16-bit market. A series of news articles titled "Sega Falcom News" appeared in Beep! MegaDrive from 1991 to 1994. Games made by the joint venture 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 the company’s president, replacing founder Masayuki Kato.

Falcom was also an early leader in video game music. Many of its early soundtracks were composed by Yuzo Koshiro and Mieko Ishikawa, musicians who used early computer sound chips.