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The Early History of Falcom

Belmonte

Member
Saw this awesome video on You Tube and thought some of you may have an interest:




I must confess I didn't play many Falcom titles, only finished Ys 1 and 2 and right now I'm playing Faxanadu (which is a partnership with Hudson). I was aware of their importance for action RPGs and how cool their music and artstyle is, specially in the PC98 days, but this is only the tip of the iceberg!

I'm impressed how influential they were for the RPG genre, the ambition of its founder and how many talented names they had in their early days. I'm even more impressed how they recovered after losing almost all of them in such a short time. Must have been one of the biggest talent exodus in gaming ever!

The video increased my backlog substantially.
 
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ranmafan

Member
Going to have to watch this. Falcom is one of my favorite gaming companies and I’m starting to look more into their early works. They made an excellent book on their complete history for their 30th anniversary many years back. Highly recommended for anyone that likes books on gaming history.
 

CamHostage

Member
Nicely done historical video. I didn't think I would make time for the whole thing since I've played very few of these games, but it was an interesting and informative hit of Japanese history.

The author did go into the PSP's affect on the path of Falcom, but I do wish there was a little bit more about PSP as an international gateway to Falcom. The Legend of Heroes games practically didn't exist here before PSP, and Ys was something of an old throwback mostly remembered for the TG-16 games, so I believe there was no Falcom for most gamers unless you played in the import scene. (I know that I knew of the company, but only one of those "over there" companies that occasionally did something with Working Designs.)

But I'll never forget the PSP hardware unveiling at E3 2004 (just love that system) and in particular seeing a little RPG in among the planned titles called "The Gagharv" by Falcom for Bandai. It wasn't necessarily special, it wasn't revolutionary, but between that and Tales of Eternia, it was striking to see a full-scale PS1-quality RPG on a portable game system. It was the start of something, and although the names/order got mangled (Xseed should have left numbers off the boxes since the release order was scrambled up on PSP) and the games were simplistic against the 3D RPG epics of the time, these three were an introduction to what would be a lasting international franchise. The 3D Trails in the Sky series was probably the real start of the franchise going global (I don't know how well the Gagharv PSP games performed in sales? and supposedly even Trails FC performed poorly at first outside Japan?) but it was that first PSP game that let me know this was a franchise to keep an eye on.

E3 2004 The Gagharv PSP Trailer (Legend of Heroes: Prophecy of the Moonlight)
 
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gtrwll

Member
Interesting video! I haven’t played any earlier Falcom games, Trails in the Sky FC being the oldest. But Ys and Trails are so magnificent series...I think I have played around 400 hours worth of Trails since April 😅
 
Trails and Ys are objectively the GOAT. Both series have so much heart and soul that blows away lots of AAA titles. I also love how they churn out games in those respective series at a good pace while still putting in lots of gameplay and story. Way better than waiting the 3-6 years you have to now for the other major JRPG series like Final Fantasy and Tales.

Trails makes me feel like I used to in those golden days of SNES and PS1 where you had a new final fantasy almost every year. Gives me the warm fuzzies each time I see a Trails intro cutscene or start page.
 

gtrwll

Member
Trails makes me feel like I used to in those golden days of SNES and PS1 where you had a new final fantasy almost every year. Gives me the warm fuzzies each time I see a Trails intro cutscene or start page.

Man this is so true, although I never owned a PS1.

It’s also funny because at first I was a bit confused that Cold Steel 2 reuses so much of the assets from 1, but in the end it didn’t bother me at all. And these games are all about the story, there would be no point in remaking everything between every game.
 
Just finished watching The video, crazy how they lost so many talent who left and went on to make great games! I mean Quintet and Takahashi Tetsuya!?

It's a shame that they chose to hide their staff to prevent them from gaining fame and leaving the company which i believe would come back and bite them in the ass in the future.
 

Daymos

Member
I watched this last week. Now here on my laptop is Trails in the Sky.. how did that happen?! :messenger_winking_tongue:

I've only finished faxanadu out of everything in that video. I have cold steel 1-2, but figured i should start with sky. On the jrpg side of things I'm well versed with anything square, enix, atlus, monlithsoft, nintendo, etc.. but like many others I haven't got into falcom. THey seem like 'required reading' if you're going to be a good student of the genre.

It's a bit of a turning point for me, I've never really been that into PC gaming (built a PC in 2008 but really only played final fantasy 11 and wow) but I'm beginning to think switch + PC might make for better JRPG gaming than switch + playstation. We'll see.
 
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gtrwll

Member
I watched this last week. Now here on my laptop is Trails in the Sky.. how did that happen?! :messenger_winking_tongue:

I've only finished faxanadu out of everything in that video. I have cold steel 1-2, but figured i should start with sky. On the jrpg side of things I'm well versed with anything square, enix, atlus, monlithsoft, nintendo, etc.. but like many others I haven't got into falcom. THey seem like 'required reading' if you're going to be a good student of the genre.

It's a bit of a turning point for me, I've never really been that into PC gaming (built a PC in 2008 but really only played final fantasy 11 and wow) but I'm beginning to think switch + PC might make for better JRPG gaming than switch + playstation. We'll see.

I played Cold Steel 1&2 first and then Sky FC and SC, and I’d say it’s probably best to play them in release order like you’ve started.

Cold Steel are probably a bit better considering the whole, but man that story arc that Sky FC and SC told was gooooood...
 
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