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After making the precarious decision to stick with PC development during the Famicom console boom, and again during the developer death knell of the mid-2000s, when Square Enix, Sega Sammy Holdings, and Namco Bandai were born of a scramble for assimilation, Nihon Falcom Corporation's most impressive achievement is probably managing to stay in business. Like a float on a tidal wave, the company has surfed 30 years of industry turmoil by staying small, sensible, and buoyant.Recognised as pioneers of the Japanese role-playing game, when Nihon Falcom was registered in 1981 - its name inspired by the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs - it consisted only of its founder, Masayuki Kato. A computer technician smitten with the Apple 2 while working overseas in Thailand, Kato became one of Japan's first Apple distributors, opening retail store Computer Land Tachikawa under the Falcom company umbrella.
A hardcore boutique for like-minded computer buffs to hang out, drink coffee, and go full-nerd in the twilight era of bedroom programming that was the early 80s, Kato teamed up with one of the store's young patrons, Yoshio Kiya, and began experimenting with game development. They spent two years warming up with low-budget safe bets: astrology, golf, and a handful of erotic text adventures for NEC's PC-88, before finding their calling with Dragon Slayer in 1984; an action RPG before the genre had even earned a designation. The follow-up, Xanadu, remains Falcom's most successful title, selling 400,000 copies in a time when PC's were a prohibitively expensive commodity.
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