Article about some Falcom pre-history

[ParanoiaDragon]

1up.com/news/prehistory-nihon-falcom

The Prehistory of Nihon Falcom
The founder and producer of Ys speaks out.
By Kevin Gifford, 11/01/2011



Toshihiro Kondo, president of Nihon Falcom, spoke about the history of his company to Japan's Famitsu magazine a few weeks back. He's currently heading a company that, after a lull, is going from strength to strength -- its latest PSP RPG, The Legend of Heroes: Ao no Kiseki, has sold nearly a quarter million copies in Japan, making it one of the most successful titles for Japan's oldest RPG company in years.

In the very beginning, though -- all the way back in 1981 -- Falcom consisted entirely of Masayuki Kato, a computer engineer who became enraptured with the first personal computers that hit stores in the 1970s. "I'm one of the rare people in this industry who came here from a 'normal' job," he told Famitsu this week. "After college I worked for a decade or so as a computer technician at an automaker. I was stationed overseas at Bangkok when I touched an Apple II computer for the first time, and it was just a massive sort of culture shock to me -- I thought to myself 'What have I been doing with myself all this time?' So I bought one and started messing with it, and compared to the large-scale computers we had at work, it really seemed like they were more suited for entertainment purposes. I had tons of fun playing games on it, typing in the programs they printed in magazines and playing them with my son. He would keep saying to me 'Dad, can you have it so I have more bullets?' or 'Can you make that bad guy stop showing up?', and in the midst of modifying programs, I learned how to make my own games."

So Kato negotiated with Apple to become their Japanese distributor, opening up the first Falcom shop in late 1981. As is perhaps befitting for a computer nerd of the early 1980s, the name "Falcom" was inspired by the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, which was simply called "the Falcon" in the Japanese dub of the film. "I thought Han Solo was really cool, and so was his ship," Kato recalled. "When I was first building up the shop, PCs were still pretty expensive and they weren't really the sort of thing normal people could get their hands on freely. So I tried to create this space where people could interact with them on their own terms; I put sofas in the shop and gave out free coffee to customers."

The shift to creating games came a year later, when Falcom started to become home to a variety of enthusiastic young programmers and gamers. Among them was Yoshio Kiba, who later became Falcom's main programmer all through the glory years of the '80s and early '90s. "He was one of the regulars at the store," Kato said, "and he'd keep dropping hints to me like 'Boy, it'd sure be fun if I could play with these all day.' Finally I relented and said 'Okay, come back Monday.' That was around 1982, when I started to get serious about game development."

Falcom's first major hit was Xanadu in 1985 (above), a primordial action/RPG hybrid that went on to sell over 400,000 copies in Japan, making it the company's best-selling title to this day. "I really didn't think it would sell that much at the beginning," admitted Kato. "It was pretty normal at the time to have just a limited release at the start and then put out more copies if orders kept on coming in, but that title just went on forever. That 400,000 figure was all full-price sales, too -- if you figure piracy in, I think pretty much everyone who owned a personal computer back then wound up playing it. And the way the scene was, all the hit titles got ported to every computer you could think of, so once one version started to dwindle in sales, the latest port would come out and sales would pick up all over again."

Soon after came Ys and Ys II, two action-RPG classics that became available on Virtual Console in 2008. Despite the fact that Ys was originally devised to be an easier, more approachable version of Xanadu, Kato admits that he finds the game a little too hard for him these days. "Even people in the company today told me 'This is too hard, I can't finish it," he said with a laugh. "We were severely limited in memory and disk space back then, so one of the only ways we could add depth to our games was to make them harder. There's no way you could get away with that if you were making a game today. There wasn't nearly as much of a selection available at the time, either, so I think gamers made more of an effort to play a single game for as long as possible. They were more willing to stick with games, even if they thought they weren't very good."

Check out the interview with current president Kondo to hear about what Falcom's been up to in more recent times.


The Trail of Nihon Falcom
The president of Japan's oldest existing RPG maker speaks.
By Kevin Gifford, 09/07/2011



If you recognize the name Nihon Falcom, then it seems safe to say that you're a very hardcore gamer. The small Tokyo-based game developer has been in the JRPG business long before it was even called JRPGs, pioneering the genre with games like Ys, Xanadu, The Legend of Heroes, and a billion others. In a Japanese game business that's been consistently shrinking for years, Falcom is also turning into a surprising success story -- its newest title, The Legend of Heroes: Ao no Kiseki (due out September 29 in Japan), is on track to become its best-selling game in years just on the preorders alone.
It certainly wasn't like this back in 1981, when Falcom was first founded. "We got our start by being one of the first representatives for Apple in Japan," president Toshihiro Kondo told Famitsu magazine in an interview published over the past two weeks. "A shop selling Apple II computers was a pretty rare thing back then in Japan, so most of our clientele were hardcore computer fans. It wasn't long before the group we had assembled started trying to make games -- it was really a natural process. Even by that time in the early '80s, though, a lot of us were worried that we were entering the game market too late, that there wouldn't be any industry in a few years."

Falcom's first few years worth of games are nothing memorable -- mostly throwaway text adventures or clones of Richard Garriott's Ultima RPGs -- but the company found its voice starting in the mid-'80s, with blockbuster titles like Xanadu, Ys and Sorcerian all coming out within a couple years of each other. (Xanadu, which sold over 400,000 copies across multiple computer formats, remains Falcom's top-selling game of all time.) "We're fortunate in that a lot of the staff at Falcom had the experience of growing up with series like Ys and Xanadu and Dragon Slayer," Kondo said. "I think there's this sort of tacit agreement among everyone here that we have to do what we're striving to do in our work, or else we'd be disrespecting our own history. That idea is at the foundation of what we do -- we always make sure everything's right with each game, and if there's a problem, we don't just ignore it and hope it goes away. It's the obvious things, but we tackle all of them, one by one."

Unlike most well-known Japanese studios, Falcom stuck almost exclusively to releasing its games on computers through its history, even as the Japanese marketplace for PC games dwindled down to virtually nothing but soft-porn adventures. "As we continued developing for PC, our competitors started shifting over to consoles one after the other," commented Kondo. "Falcom itself had several opportunities over the years to make this shift themselves -- we did develop a couple titles on the PC Engine, and some of our games were also released on the Super NES. Still, it just came down to the fact that PC games were easier for us to make. You didn't have to go through the first-party certification process on PC, and you could work on games literally until the very end, even if it meant begging the manufacturing plant to give you three more days. We had control over every part of the process. That market, though, has now shrunk to the point that it was getting harder and harder to support -- the first PC game I produced for Falcom [in 1998] set a new company record for low sales."

A quarter-century after it was founded, Falcom had to make a change in platform. The choice it made, the PSP, was a surprising one -- especially because in 2006, the PSP was far from a major contender in the Japanese market. "If you were looking at pure sales, the Nintendo DS would've been the plain choice at that particular moment," Kondo admitted. "However, both the DS's lineup and the entire concept behind the hardware were geared toward casual users, an audience completely different from Falcom's usual customers. The PSP didn't have a huge userbase back then, but the concept behind the machine and the software was basically to appeal to PS2 gamers, so that's how we made our choice. It was really more of a hunch than anything else."

It was a hunch that paid off, though, partly because it fit Falcom's image in Japanese gamers' eyes perfectly. For better or for worse, Falcom has remained small in an industry full of giants, a sort of artisan's workshop where gameplay always trumps the potential for sales. "That's true," Kondo responded, "and I think we really haven't cared as much about sales as we maybe should've. During our PC era, we'd give every effort to game development and it'd be like 'This game's great! Hooray!' That's not necessarily a terrible idea in the consumer market, but plainly it's not going to give us a satisfying amount of sales all the time, either."

That's something wants to improve on (and has, for that matter), but he certainly doesn't want Falcom to lose what makes it special in the process. "We can't compete with the big studios in terms of graphics and animation and so on," he said, "but what we can excel at -- getting all the details correct, polishing the gameplay, making a great story and a great soundtrack -- the things that don't require as much money, we can stay in the hunt. That's the approach we've taken for the past three decades, and that's what our customer base expects from us. I'm sure it'll only get harder to keep that up, but it's become a vital weapon, I think, and it's something I don't think we can ever afford to change."

[DragonmasterDan]

Nice, thanks for the link.

[SignOfZeta]

Nice article. I didn't realize Falcom was so on the rebound. Good news.

[NecroPhile]

Interesting stuff - thanks for sharing.  Their name came from the Millennium Falcon and they pioneered the touchy-feely vibe of Apple Stores twenty years before the first Apple Store... who knew?

[Digi.k]

I wish nihon Falcom would start releasing games both over XBLA and PSN

[ParanoiaDragon]

At the very least, it sounds like PS3 games are a possibility, which is just fine with me, since I never play my 360, though, I have the stupid arcade edition...but, got it for free, so, can't complain....other then that it takes up space

[DragonmasterDan]

At the very least, it sounds like PS3 games are a possibility, which is just fine with me, since I never play my 360, though, I have the stupid arcade edition...but, got it for free, so, can't complain....other then that it takes up space

I think with the newer dashboard and a flash drive you can download games to the flash drive. You can get 8-16 gig Flash drives under 20.00.

Unfortunately, while it does let you buy downloadable software it won't allow you to download the emulation software needed to play original Xbox games, that still requires a hard drive.

[Mathius]

I do wish Falcom would release their games on something other than a PSP. I prefer gaming on a console with a good controller than gaming on a portable. Especially when it is Ys.

[ParanoiaDragon]

I do wish Falcom would release their games on something other than a PSP. Especially when it is Ys.

They are, it's called the Sony PS Vita!   Seriously though, yeah, I do want console gaming from Falcom. Though, in general, I feel like they might not be able to get away with the more ol' schooledness of their games on a console unfortunately.  Almost everything needs to be 3rd/1st person these days.  Would be great if they could do a totally 2D game on the PS3 & for them to make enough $ off of it to make it worth it!

[Digi.k]

another old thread brought back from the dead..

A new interview with Falcom at eurgamer website:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-02-14-falcom-vs-the-fans

I always wondered about Adol and Lilia and this explains what and why..

Because Adol has a habit of ignoring almost every female advance during the entirety of Ys - and that's a lot of advances - you must be aware of the enduring fanbase rumour that he is either asexual or homosexual. Would you be so kind as to finally set the record straight on his orientation?

TK: This is actually a topic that comes up often among the staff. One point that always gets raised is that Feena, the heroine of Ys 1, is most likely very important to Adol. It's not known whether or not Adol will have a chance to meet her again, but Adol definitely still cherishes her memory, and thus he doesn't really go for other girls' advances - is the general understanding. Adol's story is that of a wanderer and it's a given that he will have to part with the heroine at the end of the tale, so perhaps he feels it would be irresponsible to start anything with any of the girls. Furthermore, Adol is also an avatar of the player and each player holds different feelings towards the various heroines. Rather than make explicit what Adol is feeling, we would rather leave that to the player and let them enjoy their own interpretations.

[Otaking]

another old thread brought back from the dead..

A new interview with Falcom at eurgamer website:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-02-14-falcom-vs-the-fans

I always wondered about Adol and Lilia and this explains what and why..

Because Adol has a habit of ignoring almost every female advance during the entirety of Ys - and that's a lot of advances - you must be aware of the enduring fanbase rumour that he is either asexual or homosexual. Would you be so kind as to finally set the record straight on his orientation?

TK: This is actually a topic that comes up often among the staff. One point that always gets raised is that Feena, the heroine of Ys 1, is most likely very important to Adol. It's not known whether or not Adol will have a chance to meet her again, but Adol definitely still cherishes her memory, and thus he doesn't really go for other girls' advances - is the general understanding. Adol's story is that of a wanderer and it's a given that he will have to part with the heroine at the end of the tale, so perhaps he feels it would be irresponsible to start anything with any of the girls. Furthermore, Adol is also an avatar of the player and each player holds different feelings towards the various heroines. Rather than make explicit what Adol is feeling, we would rather leave that to the player and let them enjoy their own interpretations.

Basically they're saying he's gay.

[esteban]

another old thread brought back from the dead..

A new interview with Falcom at eurgamer website:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-02-14-falcom-vs-the-fans

I always wondered about Adol and Lilia and this explains what and why..

Because Adol has a habit of ignoring almost every female advance during the entirety of Ys - and that's a lot of advances - you must be aware of the enduring fanbase rumour that he is either asexual or homosexual. Would you be so kind as to finally set the record straight on his orientation?

TK: This is actually a topic that comes up often among the staff. One point that always gets raised is that Feena, the heroine of Ys 1, is most likely very important to Adol. It's not known whether or not Adol will have a chance to meet her again, but Adol definitely still cherishes her memory, and thus he doesn't really go for other girls' advances - is the general understanding. Adol's story is that of a wanderer and it's a given that he will have to part with the heroine at the end of the tale, so perhaps he feels it would be irresponsible to start anything with any of the girls. Furthermore, Adol is also an avatar of the player and each player holds different feelings towards the various heroines. Rather than make explicit what Adol is feeling, we would rather leave that to the player and let them enjoy their own interpretations.

I love that explanation.

[Otaking]

Adol likes it doggy.. I mean Dogi style.

[xcrement5x]

Adol likes it doggy.. I mean Dogi style.

Lol, that seems like it would be a line in the game if they had been translated by Working Designs or something.  "Hello ladies, interested in some Dogi Style fun?"

[turboswimbz]

Adol likes it doggy.. I mean Dogi style.

Lol, that seems like it would be a line in the game if they had been translated by Working Designs or something.  "Hello ladies, interested in some Dogi Style fun?"

Yes, YES I WOULD like that fun from you

[Psycho Punch]

Adol's gay. He likes men. He lifts weights. He can dance. His place is neat. He keeps it clean. He flosses his teeth. He's gay.