Edia revives Falcom's Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes
The two role-playing games that started Falcom's Legend of Heroes series are coming back in their voiced PC-98 versions, with platforms and a release date still under wraps.
Edia is going back to the very beginning of one of Japan's longest-running role-playing series. The company confirmed this week that it will re-release Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes and Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes II, the two Nihon Falcom games that opened the Legend of Heroes line. Both will return in their PC-98 versions, the editions that add voice acting to certain scenes. Edia has not yet named a release date or any platforms.
Where these two games sit in the run
The pair started life as part of Falcom's earlier Dragon Slayer series before growing into a series of their own. They debuted on the PC-88, the first in 1989 and the second in 1992, and the first inspired a two-episode original video animation in 1992; Urban Vision brought that OVA to North American VHS in 1997. After those two, Falcom released the linked Gagharv Trilogy and dropped the Dragon Slayer branding altogether.
Why a PC-98 re-release is a bigger deal than it sounds
The PC-98 was a Japanese-only computer line, and its library has largely stayed there, preserved through emulation and second-hand floppies rather than official reissues. The voiced versions of these two games are the ones Japanese players of a certain age actually remember, and they have never been easy to buy legitimately in the decades since. Edia saying it will re-release those specific builds, rather than the plainer earlier cuts, is the difference between a museum piece and the version people have nostalgia for.
The series it eventually became
In 2004, Falcom released The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, which began the Trails subseries of interlinked games, and every entry since has belonged to it. There are now 13 non-remake Trails instalments, the most recent being The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon, which launched in Japan in September 2024. Falcom has also been revisiting the start of that era: Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter and Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter, remakes of the first two Trails games, went on sale in September 2025 and on 17 September 2026 respectively.
Our opinion
Re-release announcements without platforms are the industry's way of saying "we got the rights, we are still working out the ports", and Edia deserves the scepticism that invites. That said, the instinct is right. The Trails remakes have proven there is a paying audience for the earliest corners of this series, and the PC-98 builds are exactly the sort of thing that gets quietly lost when a publisher changes hands. Falcom's back catalogue is one of the best-preserved in Japanese gaming, and the honest gap in it is the beginning. Announce the platforms, and this becomes an easy recommendation rather than a nice idea.