It is in some cases even difficult to find information regarding which names truly composed each individual track. Today, the title is known as an absolute legend in the realm of legacy game music, while the individual composers it has been attributed to for 30 years often remain shrouded in mystery. Even soundtracks produced before then were retroactively assimilated into the title for the sake of fueling the mystique. There is a long list of Japanese musicians tied to this Pseudonym, which for whatever reason has been attached to Falcom games rather than the names of the actual composers since just before 1990. Elaborate synth compositions that are the musical equivalent of sturdy monoliths towering into the sky with no end in sight. Long guitar solos that take a cues from metal superstars like Yngwie Malmsteen.

Chances are if you are a game music aficionado, you’ve seen those words credited to a particularly bangin’ soundtrack at some point. Wild Virtuoso Rock-N-Roll Soundtracks are Falcom’s Charm Pointįalcom Sound Team J.D.K. While the CD-Rom add-on for NEC’s PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16 in North America) ended up with much more accurate console ports, and even had its own exclusive Falcom releases, it also had trouble establishing itself outside of Japan, thus Falcom would remain tardy to the party throughout the 90s. Ports were often watered down, being as the original PC hardware was much more sophisticated than early consoles.ĭuring a period where the Japanese video game industry was seeing a huge renaissance in terms of console games with the Famicom booming in the East as well as the West, Falcom needed a much stronger console game to stand out. However, it was clear that Falcom was primarily a developer of PC games.

Some of the more popular ones would find their way to consoles like the Sega Master System, and the NES/Famicom, even getting western localizations. Many of Falcom’s early titles throughout the 80s appeared on Japanese PCs such as the PC-8801 and the Sharp X1, which received very little if any recognition outside of Japan. Square and Enix (later Square Enix) made themselves household names moving from the late 1980s into the 90s, while Falcom (AKA Nihon Falcom) played the cool kid who arrived at the end of the night to greet party goers just as the last call was going out.

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