Nihon Falcom began as a computer shop. Founded in March 1981, it opened Computer Land Tachikawa, in the western suburbs of Tokyo, that July, and sold its first game for personal computers in June 1982. From 1986 to 1989 it was named Software Maker of the Year four years running, in Falcom’s own record of its awards. Xanadu (1985) sold 400,000 copies by Falcom’s count, Ys (1987) set out to be a role-playing game anyone could finish, and a teenage Yuzo Koshiro walked in with a cassette of his music and got a job. Falcom is still based in Tachikawa, still writes its own games, and in 2025 counted more than nine million copies of its Trails series sold.
Fast facts
- Founded: March 1981, in Tachikawa, Tokyo. The present Nihon Falcom Corporation was established in November 2001.
- Founder: Masayuki Kato.
- President: Toshihiro Kondo, since 2007.
- Listed: on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Mothers market since December 2003.
- Series: Dragon Slayer (from 1984), Ys (from 1987), The Legend of Heroes (from 1989) and its Trails games (from 2004).
The computer years
Falcom says its December 1983 release was “Japan’s first full-scale home-grown role-playing game”. The game that made its name came eleven months later. Dragon Slayer, released in November 1984 for NEC’s PC-8801, was billed as a “New Type Real-time Role-Playing Game”: the player fought monsters directly instead of choosing commands from a menu. It is one of the games usually named at the start of the action RPG. Xanadu, a side-on action role-playing game, followed in October 1985, and Japanese magazine awards came in a run. Xanadu, Xanadu Scenario II and Romancia took the top three places in one 1986 software prize. Xanadu Scenario II was also the game that used more than ten songs from Yuzo Koshiro’s demo tape. Falcom hired him part-time as a “sound programmer”.
Ys came out on 21 June 1987. Its programmer, Masaya Hashimoto, explained the idea in a 1987 interview: “Recent RPGs have been very difficult… we set out to create the opposite kind of game, something that would be accessible, easy to play.” Falcom’s slogan for it was that role-playing games were entering “an age of kindness”. The hero, the red-haired swordsman Adol Christin, fights by walking into monsters. Computer Gaming World, reviewing the American TurboGrafx-16 CD version of Ys I & II in 1990, called it the “bump-and-grind” school of fighting: “all that has to happen is for Adol to literally run into a monster”. It found that rather dull, but praised the music and the anime endings.
Sorcerian followed in December 1987. Falcom describes it as the game that “separated the scenario from the system”: a party of characters who carried over from one self-contained adventure to the next. When Sierra On-Line published it in America, its newsletter promised “fifteen thrilling role-playing scenarios in one game” and called it “the most exciting Japanese import yet”. Ys II and Sorcerian took first and second place in Japan’s 1988 software awards. Ys III: Wanderers from Ys (1989) turned the series side-on. In November 1989 Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes started the menu-driven series that became Falcom’s other mainstay.
Some of the people who passed through Falcom in these years became well known elsewhere. Koshiro wrote music for Ys, Ys II and Sorcerian before leaving to work freelance. Tetsuya Takahashi drew graphics at Falcom before moving to Square and, later, founding Monolith Soft.
Music
Falcom treated its music as a product. In December 1988 it started its own record label, and the Falcom Special Box ’89 won a King Records award. Its soundtracks are credited to the Falcom Sound Team jdk.
Remakes, Trails and the present
Through the 1990s Falcom kept making games for Japanese PCs, and its series reached the consoles too: Super Play previewed Falcom’s Ys V for the Super Famicom in 1995. Late in the decade it turned to remakes: Windows versions of The Legend of Heroes and Sorcerian in 1997 and Ys Eternal, a remake of the first Ys, in April 1998. A year earlier a Japanese reader had told Edge’s letters page that Falcom was remaking Ys, “probably the best Japanese RPG”.
In June 2004 The Legend of Heroes VI: Trails in the Sky moved the series to a new world, the first of the Kiseki or Trails games, whose story carries on from one game to the next: Kuro no Kiseki II (2022), for example, was billed as a “new chapter” in the series’ Calvard Republic story. Zero no Kiseki (2010) sold out in many shops on its first day; its sequel Ao no Kiseki (2011) sold more in its first week than Zero had in total. Ys carried on alongside: Ys: The Oath in Felghana (2005) remade the side-scrolling Ys III with three-dimensional action, Ys Origin (2006) told the story of Ys’s founding 700 years earlier, and Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana came out on the PlayStation Vita in July 2016 and the PlayStation 4 in May 2017.
Its new games now come out on PlayStation and Nintendo consoles. Kuro no Kiseki (2021) celebrated the company’s 40th anniversary, Ys X: Nordics (2023) the series’ 35th, and Trails in the Sky the 1st (2025), a full remake of the 2004 game, was the first Trails game released worldwide on the same day. Falcom reported Trails sales of seven million in 2022 and more than nine million in 2025.
Sources
- Computer Gaming World issue 77, December 1990, pp. 93–94: “TurboGrafx 16’s Ys I & II” (Adol, combat by running into monsters, “bump-and-grind”).
- InterAction (Sierra On-Line), vol. 2 no. 2, 1989, p. 11: Sorcerian from Nihon Falcom (“fifteen thrilling role-playing scenarios in one game”).
- Super Play issue 30, April 1995: Ys V preview (Nihon Falcom, Super Famicom).
- Edge issue 45, May 1997, p. 89: reader’s letter (Falcom “working on a remake of Ys”).
- Nihon Falcom, company outline and company history, 1980s to 2020s (web, secondary): founding in March 1981 and the present corporation in November 2001; Tachikawa head office; Computer Land Tachikawa; first game in 1982; the December 1983 role-playing game; Dragon Slayer (November 1984), Xanadu (October 1985, 400,000 copies), Romancia, Ys (June 1987), Sorcerian (December 1987); the software awards of 1986–89, including Software Maker of the Year four years running; the Falcom Label (December 1988) and the King Records award; The Legend of Heroes (November 1989); the 1997 Windows remakes and Ys Eternal (April 1998); listing on Mothers (December 2003); Trails in the Sky (June 2004), The Oath in Felghana (June 2005), Ys Origin (December 2006), Zero no Kiseki (2010), Ao no Kiseki (2011), Ys VIII on PS4 (May 2017); Kuro no Kiseki (2021), Ys X (2023), Trails in the Sky the 1st (2025); Trails sales. https://www.falcom.co.jp/company/outline and https://www.falcom.co.jp/company/history
- “Ys – 1987 Developer Interview”, translated by shmuplations (web, secondary; the developers’ own words in translation): Masaya Hashimoto as programmer and Tomoyoshi Miyazaki as scenario writer; the aim of an accessible game. https://shmuplations.com/ys/
- Wikipedia, “Nihon Falcom” (web, secondary): Masayuki Kato as founder; Toshihiro Kondo president from 2007. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihon_Falcom
- Wikipedia, “Ys: The Oath in Felghana” and “Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana” (web, secondary): the remake of Ys III with the three-dimensional action system of Ys VI; Ys VIII on the PlayStation Vita on 21 July 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ys:_The_Oath_in_Felghana and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ys_VIII:_Lacrimosa_of_Dana
- Sega Retro, “Popful Mail” (web, secondary): soundtrack credited to the Falcom Sound Team J.D.K.
- Dragon Slayer’s billing, Ys’s “age of kindness” and Koshiro’s years at Falcom: see the Action RPG and Yuzo Koshiro entries and their citations; Takahashi’s: the Tetsuya Takahashi entry.