Nihon Falcom

Nihon Falcom is among the very oldest Japanese development studios and still holds a reputation as a maker of honest RPGs with an emphasis on story, music, and long-term continuity of the game world. While major studios like Square or Enix expanded over the years into dozens of genres and formats, Falcom has stayed true to action and tactical RPGs, and from this narrow specialization has drawn two massive series — Ys and The Legend of Heroes — which have become synonymous with old-school Japanese RPGs. The company is a prime example of a studio that never needed to be the biggest player on the market to build a loyal and remarkably patient audience, spanning from PC-98 home computers in the 1980s to today's consoles and PC. In a genre where many studios experiment with format and presentation, Falcom instead has long deepened just a handful of game worlds — and that is precisely where its unique standing lies.

History

Falcom was founded at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s as one of the first Japanese computer game developers and quickly established itself on the PC-98 platform, the standard of Japanese home computers at the time, on which the vast majority of domestic game production outside of consoles was then being made. It was there, in 1987, that Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished was released, an action RPG that, thanks to its fast combat system, clear visuals, and unforgettable synthesizer soundtrack, kicked off one of the longest-running game series ever. A year later came the sequel Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished – The Final Chapter, which concluded the story and cemented the studio's position as a specialist in action RPGs emphasizing pace, clarity, and atmosphere over complex systems.

The same era saw the launch of the second key series — Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes in 1990, which over the following decades spun off into the standalone Trails branch, today one of the most extensive and elaborately crafted RPG sagas on the market, renowned for its interconnected world and politically charged plots. Falcom also experimented outside these two main brands, for example with the action-adventure Brandish in 1991 or the charming Popful Mail, which was first released on PC-98 and three years later got a reworked version for the Sega Mega-CD.

The transition from PC-98 to modern consoles happened gradually — Falcom long remained a strongly Japan-focused phenomenon whose games reached the West only sporadically and with considerable delay. It was not until the 2010s that its titles began to be systematically localized and released on PlayStation Vita, PS4, Switch, and PC in the same year as, or shortly after, their Japanese release. Titles such as Ys: Memories of Celceta, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, or the Trails of Cold Steel series finally brought the studio to an international audience, without it abandoning the distinctive genre signature and craftsmanship fans had grown used to since the PC-98 era.

Today

Nihon Falcom still operates today as an independent studio focused almost exclusively on continuing Ys and Trails, both series releasing at regular, nearly annual intervals on current consoles and PC, and regularly receiving remasters of older installments for new platforms. The company maintains a reputation as a reliable, if fairly conservative, publisher — it doesn't bet on major technological leaps or fashionable trends, but on continuity of its story universe, well-crafted characters, and loyalty to its longtime fans. Those fans appreciate that its creators aren't afraid to stick to their own, long-proven path even amid major shifts in the games industry, at a time when many other studios change direction with every new trend. More than four decades into its existence, Falcom thus retains its position as a small but remarkably stable player in the field of Japanese RPGs, whose games keep receiving regular remasters and new installments regardless of how the rest of the market shifts around it.