Toshihiro Kondo

Overview

Toshihiro Kondo (近藤 季洋) is an employee at Nihon Falcom where he currently serves as the president of the company. Back when he was a college student, Kondo played The Legend of Heroes III and became such a big fan of the title that he created a fan site called "The Saga of Tirasweel" in June 1996. The site initially began as a student project but eventually became so popular that Kondo began communicating with Falcom directly and eventually applied for a job at the company after graduating. He began his career at Falcom in 1998 as a web designer, creating sites for Falcom's games, but eventually became involved in game development. He started out helping to write scenarios for The Legend of Heroes series and eventually became a project manager. When Shinji Yamazaki stepped down from his position as president due to health reasons in 2007, Kondo was offered the job by one of the executives on the board of directors and he accepted. Now, as the third president in the company's history, Kondo has been the public face of Falcom while still working on games directly such as helping to write scenarios for the Ys franchise.

Trivia

• Toshihiro Kondo began practicing karate when he was 36, due to his oldest son also getting involved in the material art, and he is now currently a black belt [3].

References

1. AX2019 - Toshihiro Kondo, From Fan to President (NIS America, 2019).
2. Site Introduction (The First Light, 1999) - Mentions when "The Saga of Tirasweel" was founded.
3. 「お前に社長なんかできる訳がない」新海誠と肩を並べて怒られていた男が、日本有数のゲーム会社で社長になったワケをお酒を飲ませて訊いてみた (Den-fami Nico Gamer, 2023).