History Creator / Falcom

** ''Ys III: Wanderers from Ys''

Nihon Falcom Corporation 『日本ファルコム株式会社』 is one of Japan's oldest and most venerable video game development and publication houses, having begun business in 1981 selling UsefulNotes/AppleII hardware and software, and released their first game, ''Galactic Wars'', in 1982 on the UsefulNotes/{{PC88}}, with their first truly significant release being ''VideoGame/DragonSlayer'' two years later, that being perhaps the very first ActionRPG. They are probably best known outside of Japan for creating the ''VideoGame/{{Ys}}'' ActionRPG series and giving its games [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic catchy soundtracks]] courtesy of the company's internal sound production staff: the "Falcom Sound Team jdk"(not to be confused with jdk Band - a band made of freelance musicians who provide arrangements and performances of Sound Team jdk's music for both arranged albums/soundtracks and live on stage during concerts). In Japan they have a number of other famous franchises, most notably ''The Legend of Heroes'' franchise, and '''especially''' ''[[VideoGame/TrailsSeries The Legend of Heroes - Trails]]'' series.

*** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesKuroNoKiseki''

*** ''Dragon Slayer VIII: The Legend of Xanadu''

*** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsInTheSky'' (''Sora no Kiseki'' in Japan)

** ''Dragon Slayer VII: VideoGame/LordMonarch''

* ColonCancer: Averted in the Western releases when they spun off The Legend of Heroes neatly into its own series after Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes II, before things even got started. Still somewhat happens in the Japanese [=PS4=] rereleases of ''Cold Steel'' thanks to the version having a subtitle and thus two colons, but it could be worse - can you imagine the Title ''Dragon Slayer XVII: The Legend of Heroes XII: Trails of Cold Steel: - Thor's Military Academy 1204 -''?

* CuteKitten: Mishy(Michey in Japan), the company's mascot who makes cameos in a few titles either as an actual cat or a plushy.
* DenialOfDiagonalAttack: Games on the early PC platforms suffered from this problem withe limited tile-based movement.

Nihon Falcom Corporation 『日本ファルコム株式会社』 is one of Japan's oldest and most venerable video game development and publication houses, having begun business in 1981 selling UsefulNotes/AppleII hardware and software, and released their first game, ''Galactic Wars'', in 1982 on the UsefulNotes/{{PC88}}, with their first truly significant release being ''VideoGame/DragonSlayer'' two years later, that being perhaps the very first ActionRPG... [[BadExportForYou and you've probably only recently heard of them if you ever did at all]]. They are probably best known outside of Japan for creating the ''VideoGame/{{Ys}}'' ActionRPG series and giving its games [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic catchy soundtracks]] courtesy of the company's internal sound production staff: the "Falcom Sound Team jdk"(not to be confused with jdk Band - a band made of freelance musicians who provide arrangements and performances of Sound Team jdk's music for both arranged albums/soundtracks and live on stage during concerts). In Japan they have a number of other famous franchises, most notably ''The Legend of Heroes'' franchise, and '''especially''' ''[[VideoGame/TrailsSeries The Legend of Heroes - Trails]]'' series.

These days, Falcom's greatest focus is on their "Kiseki" / "Trails" franchise, the first game of which finally came to North America in March of 2011. To date, twelve ''Trails'' games have been released in Japan. The company remains well-respected for generally solid gameplay, great writing in its ''Trails'' games, and incredible music in basically every game it releases; both original soundtracks and arranged music albums. While still not extremely well-known in western countries, recent releases like ''Ys: The Oath in Felghana'' have raised the company's profile significantly due to warm reception and ''Trails'' could cement their place in the relative mainstream.

You can find all but 2 of their albums on [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz7eke4JGlbtc11_6mmA7ew this YouTube channel]] . Starting in January 11th, 2012, they also began to put their soundtracks up on the western portions of [[http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/falcom-sound-team-jdk/id120174391 iTunes store]] and [[http://www.amazon.com/dp/artist-redirect/B00DW6OKRS/ Amazon]] stores! As of this edit, they have put up albums for the majority of their games released overseas as well as all the recent Trails releases in Japan. As of 2018, a lot of the music is also available over Spotify, letting you enjoy the albums with some limitations if you're short on cash. Their music is also released under Falcom's [[https://translate.google.com/translate?act=url&depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://www.falcom.co.jp/music-use/rules Music Free Declaration Policy]], meaning that so long as you bought the game and rip the music yourself (which is really trivial to do)[[note]]The PC games in particular, leaves the music files in high quality uncompressed wave format unencrypted and easily found in the game folders.[[/note]] , or bought the music either on CD or online, you're good to use it for your own projects, with notable restrictions being to outright pirate the music or use it in games.

* CuteKitten: Mishy(Michey in Japan), the company's mascot who makes cameos in more recent titles either as an actual cat or a plushy.

** ''Ys X: Nordics''

*** ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsFromZeroAndTrailsToAzure The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero]]''
*** ''The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure''

* CameraScrew:
** The ''Brandish games had an...interesting workaround for this problem. Instead of featuring a protagonist's viewpoint that can be turned around to face another direction, the player character is instead facing upwards and the game's view rotates automatically with each step.
** ''Gurumin'' suffers slightly from a zoomed-in perspective and low field-of-view.

These days, Falcom's greatest focus is on their "Kiseki" / "Trails" franchise, the first game of which finally came to North America in March of 2011. To date, ten ''Trails'' games have been released in Japan. The company remains well-respected for generally solid gameplay, great writing in its ''Trails'' games, and incredible music in basically every game it releases; both original soundtracks and arranged music albums. While still not extremely well-known in western countries, recent releases like ''Ys: The Oath in Felghana'' have raised the company's profile significantly due to warm reception and ''Trails'' could cement their place in the relative mainstream.

*** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsIntoReverie''

You can find all but 2 of their albums on [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz7eke4JGlbtc11_6mmA7ew this YouTube channel]] . Starting in January 11th, 2012, they also began to put their soundtracks up on the western portions of [[http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/falcom-sound-team-jdk/id120174391 iTunes store]] and [[http://www.amazon.com/dp/artist-redirect/B00DW6OKRS/ Amazon]] stores! As of this edit, they have put up albums for the majority of their games released overseas as well as all the recent Trails releases in Japan. As of 2018, a lot of the music is also available over Spotify, letting you enjoy the albums with some limitations if you're short on cash. Their music is also released under Falcom's [[https://translate.google.com/translate?act=url&depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://www.falcom.co.jp/music-use/rules Music Free Declaration Policy]], meaning that so long as you bought the game and rip the music yourself (which is really trivial to do)[[note]]The PC games in particular, leaves the music files in high quality uncompressed wave format unencrypted and easily found in the game folders.[[/note]] , or bought the music either on CD or online, you're good to use it for your own projects, with notable restrictions being to outright pirate the music or use it in fangames.

** ''VideoGame/YsIIAncientYsVanishedTheFinalChapter''
*** Both games would be given a CompilationRerelease into various packages such as ''Ys Book I & II'', ''Ys Eternal'' and ''Ys I & II Chronicles''.

** ''VideoGame/AstekaIITemploDelSol'' (''Tombs & Treasure'' in North America)

Unlike other developer-publishers of its pedigree and generation (particularly Square and Enix), Falcom never established an overseas subsidiary... and as a result, their overseas releases have been ''extremely'' scattershot and spread among a legion of publishers, from Creator/{{Nintendo}} to Creator/{{Broderbund|Software}} to Creator/{{Sega}} to NEC to Creator/WorkingDesigns to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sammy American Sammy]] to Creator/HudsonSoft to Creator/BandaiNamcoEntertainment to [[{{Creator/Sierra}} Sierra Entertainment]] to Creator/{{Infocom}} to Creator/{{Atlus}}. (Falcom even helped found "Kyodai Software Marketing" in 1988 in an attempt to self-publish on American [=PCs=], but that operation folded after just releasing ''Ys 1''.) The end result was very little consistency in release schedule or quality and style of translation, the Falcom name often not appearing on their own products (or at best tangentially appearing) leading to no brand recognition, general neglect of Falcom's strongest platform (the PC), and some of Falcom's best games taking ''years'' to cross the Pacific, especially in the latter part of TheNineties and into TheNoughties (with some ''still'' in NoExportForYou limbo as of this writing) and with some games getting [[BadExportForYou absolutely shameful treatments]] (the "Gagharv trilogy", ''The Legend of Heroes'' III-V, being the most infamous disaster and one which nearly killed the chance for ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsInTheSky'' to cross the Pacific). Falcom formed a partnership with Creator/XSEEDGames to bring a number of games to North America, ensuring that a more regular release pipeline for their games is maintained.

*** Further collected into various packages such as ''Ys Eternal'', ''Ys Complete'' and ''Ys Chronicles''

** ''VideoGame/YsIVMaskOfTheSun[=/=][[VideoGame/YsIVTheDawnOfYs The Dawn of Ys]]''
*** Remade as ''Videogame/YsMemoriesOfCelceta'' - Technically Falcom's own version of Ys IV, but it's so completely unlike any other version.

** ''Ys Origin''

* ''Ys vs. Sora no Kiseki: Alternative Saga''

** ''Ys: Ancient Ys Vanished: Omen''
** ''Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished: The Final Chapter''

** ''Ys IV: Mask of the Sun/The Dawn of Ys''

** ''Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand''

*** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsFromZero''

*** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesZeroNoKiseki''
*** ''The Legend of Heroes: Ao no Kiseki''
*** ''VideoGame/NayutaNoKiseki''

*** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesHajimariNoKiseki''

* AutobotsRockOut: Guitar riffs and fantasy action seem to go hand in hand in their games, curtosy of Falcom Sound Team JDK. The ''Ys'' games are perhaps the most famous for featuring fairly standard fantasy settings set to shredding guitars and heavy metal in the background.

You can find all but 2 of their albums on [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz7eke4JGlbtc11_6mmA7ew this YouTube channel]] . Starting in January 11th, 2012, they also began to put their soundtracks up on the western portions of [[http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/falcom-sound-team-jdk/id120174391 iTunes store]] and [[http://www.amazon.com/dp/artist-redirect/B00DW6OKRS/ Amazon]]stores! As of this edit, they have put up albums for the majority of their games released overseas as well as all the recent Trails releases in Japan. As of 2018, a lot of the music is also available over Spotify, letting you enjoy the albums with some limitations if you're short on cash. Their music is also released under Falcom's [[https://translate.google.com/translate?act=url&depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://www.falcom.co.jp/music-use/rules Music Free Declaration Policy]], meaning that so long as you bought the game and rip the music yourself (which is really trivial to do)[[note]]The PC games in particular, leaves the music files in high quality uncompressed wave format unencrypted and easily found in the game folders.[[/note]] , or bought the music either on CD or online, you're good to use it for your own projects, with notable restrictions being to outright pirate the music or use it in fangames.