[This article was originally published crediting Jdkluv as the creator of the Falcom chart (featured below) but has been updated to reflect the original creator, Aaltomies]

The month of September is a very special time – and I’m not talking about that feeling of returning to your studies or something. 30 years ago, Falcom started an entirely new game dubbed “Dragon Slayer”, a title which basically set the standard for action RPGs. Dragon Slayer wasn’t just considered the proto-action RPG, it was easily the game that pioneered the genre.

To be clear – the Dragon Slayer series is vast and has many spinoff series that are all mostly completely unrelated to one another. The biggest and most notable thing which connects all of the core games together is one man – Yoshio Kiya. Kiya-san designed all of the original games that were developed by the core team from within Nihon Falcom, which you can find below:

1 – Dragon Slayer (1984)
2 – Xanadu (1985)
2.1 – Xanadu Scenario II (1986)
3 – Dragon Slayer Jr: Romancia (1986)
4 – Dragon Slayer IV: Drasle Family (also known as ‘Legacy of the Wizard’ on the West) (1987)
5 – Sorcerian (1987)
5.1 – Sorcerian Additional Scenario Vol.1 (1988)
5.2 – Sengoku Sorcerian (1988)
5.3 – Pyramid Sorcerian (1988)
6 – The Legend of Heroes (1989)
6.1 – The Legend of Heroes II (1992)
7 – Lord Monarch (1991)
7.1 – Advanced Lord Monarch (1991)
7.2 – Monarch Monarch (1994)
8 – The Legend of Xanadu (1994)
8.1 – The Legend of Xanadu II: The Last of Dragon Slayer (1995)

Fan Aaltomies even created an extremely handy infographic to go along with the massive number of games found within the series:

The most interesting thing is the debate over when the original Dragon Slayer actually came out. If we’re going by Falcom’s own standards, the original PC-88 version of Dragon Slayer came out on September 10th, 1984 – however the Japanese fansite Dra-Sle-Labo begs to defer. Despite Falcom’s own claim (and even seeing Falcom’s own 30th anniversary book) list the 10th of September as the original date – we still don’t really know.

For many of us, Faxanadu was the very first Dragon Slayer spinoff that we ever got our hands onto – it was the first game in the series to make it to the west. Despite this, I fondly remember the game completely blowing my mind, so many years ago. A reminder though – Faxanadu was developed by Hudson Soft, and merely licensed from Falcom, so it’s not one of those original games developed by Kiya.

So which game from the Dragon Slayer franchise is your favorite?