Inside Ys

[Administrator]

One of Japan's oldest video game developers and sadly lesser known in the west than the Final Fantasy Corporation, Nihon Falcom is a company credited as the architect of the JRPG. Founded by computer buff Masayuki Kato, Falcom cut its teeth on NEC's PC-88 in 1982 and stayed loyal to the PC gaming scene for nearly 25 years.
Famed for beautiful games and various innovations within the RPG genre, long-running series like Dragon Slayer, Falcom's former flagship, and Brandish, a dungeon crawler, have benefited from the company's typical affection for small details, sparkling visuals, and the audio wonders of the JDK Sound Team: an in-house unit responsible for several decades of magical soundtracks.
Today under control of president Toshihiro Kondo - a fan who landed a server technician role in 1998 after a chance meeting with Falcom's founder - the company has recently initiated a profitable love affair with Sony's handheld consoles. Falcom's current flagship title, Ys (a game that made its debut way back in 1987) has been given a deserved spotlight in the west thanks to XSEED's PSP localisations. An action RPG of lordly calibre and beneficiary of several inspired remakes, it's a series you can read all about in Eurogamer's recent in-depth article.
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