Nihon Falcom

Nihon Falcom Corporation (株式会社日本ファルコム)  is a Japanese producer of primarily video games. Nihon Falcom is best known for its role-playing game franchises, most notably the Ys series and the Kiseki series (known as the Trails series in the West).

Its current president is Toshihiro Kondo.

Background
Nihon Falcom was founded on 9 March 1981 by Masayuki Kato. During his time in Bangkok, where he studied for three years, he fell in love with the Apple II computer. When he returned to Japan, Kato decided to save money in order to buy his personal Apple II. He then quit his job and started his own company: Nihon Falcom. The name "Falcom" was inspired by the Star Wars aircraft Millennium Falcon, of which he changed the last letter to refer to computers, the nature of his company.

Nihon Falcom was originally responsible for business analysis, investigation and planning geared toward the introduction of personal computers. In June, 1981, the company collaborated with the Japan International Cooperation Agency where it was responsible for a traffic economics simulator. In July, 1981, Nihon Falcom became an authorised importer and seller of Apple products in Japan.

During downtime, Kato started developing games. Falcom finished its first game, Galactic Wars, in June 1982, but didn't start selling games nation-wide until Panorama Island, its first, full-scale RPG in December 1983.