Namco
was a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company founded in 1955. It operated video arcades and amusement parks globally, and produced video games, films, toys, and arcade cabinets. Namco was one of the most influential companies in the coin-op and arcade game industry, producing multi-million-selling game franchises such as Pac-Man, Galaxian, Tekken, Soulcalibur, Tales, Ridge Racer, and Ace Combat.
The name Namco comes from Nakamura Manufacturing Company, derived from Namco's founder, Masaya Nakamura. In the 1960s, Nakamura Manufacturing built electro-mechanical arcade games such as the 1965 hit Periscope. It entered the video game industry after acquiring the struggling Japanese division of Atari in 1974, distributing games such as Breakout in Japan. The company renamed itself Namco in 1977 and published Gee Bee, its first original video game, a year later. Among Namco's first major hits was the fixed shooter Galaxian in 1979, followed by Pac-Man in 1980. Namco prospered during the golden age of arcade video games in the early 1980s, releasing popular games such as Galaga, Xevious, and Pole Position.
Namco entered the home market in 1984 with conversions of its arcade games for the MSX and the Nintendo Family Computer, later expanding to competing platforms, such as the Sega Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, and PlayStation. It continued to produce hit games in the 1990s, including Ridge Racer, Tekken, and Taiko no Tatsujin, but endured financial difficulties due to the struggling Japanese economy and diminishing arcade market.
In 2006, Namco merged with Bandai to form Bandai Namco Holdings. The standalone Namco brand continues to be used for video arcade and other entertainment products by the group's Bandai Namco Amusements division. Namco's video games division was merged into the subsidiary Bandai Namco Entertainment. Namco is remembered for its unique corporate model, its importance to the industry, and its advancements in technology.
History
Origins and acquisition of Atari Japan (1955–1977)
On June 1, 1955, Japanese businessman Masaya Nakamura founded in Ikegami, Tokyo. The son of a shotgun repair business owner, Nakamura proved unable to find work in his chosen profession of ship building in the struggling post-World War II economy. Nakamura established his own company after his father's business saw success with producing pop cork guns. Beginning with only ¥300,000, Nakamura spent the money on two hand-cranked rocking horses that he installed on the roof garden of a Matsuya department store in Yokohama.The horses were loved by children and turned a decent profit for Nakamura, who began expanding his business to cover other smaller locations. A 1959 business reorganization renamed the company Nakamura Seisakusho Company, Ltd. The Mitsukoshi department store chain noticed his success in 1963, and approached him with the idea of constructing a rooftop amusement space for its store in Nihonbashi, Tokyo. It consisted of horse rides, a picture viewing machine, and a goldfish scooping pond, with the centerpiece being a moving train named Roadaway Race. The space was a hit and led to Mitsukoshi requesting rooftop amusement parks for all of its stores.
Along with Taito, Rosen Enterprises, and Nihon Goraku Bussan, Nakamura Seisakusho became one of Japan's leading amusement companies. As the business grew in size, it used its clout to purchase amusement machines in bulk from other manufacturers at a discount, and then sell them to smaller outlets at full price. While its machines sold well, Nakamura Seisakusho lacked the manufacturing lines and distribution networks of its competitors, which made the production of them longer and more expensive.
The company was unable to place its machines inside stores because other manufacturers already had exclusive rights to these locations. In response, Nakamura Seisakusho opened a production plant in February 1966, moving its corporate office to a four-story building in Ōta, Tokyo. The company secured a deal with Walt Disney Productions to produce children's rides in the likenesses of its characters, in addition to those using popular anime characters like Q-Taro; this move allowed the business to further expand its operations and become a driving force in the Japanese coin-op market.
Though the manufacturing facility was largely reserved for its Disney and anime rides, Nakamura also used it to construct larger, more elaborate electro-mechanical games. The first of these was Torpedo Launcher, a submarine warfare shooting gallery later titled Periscope. Its other products included Ultraman-themed gun games and pinball-like games branded with Osomatsu-kun characters.
The name Namco was introduced in 1971 as a brand for several of its machines. The company grew to having ten employees, which included Nakamura himself. It saw continued success with its arcade games, which had become commonplace in bowling alleys and grocery stores. The company also established a robotics division to produce robots for entertainment centers and festivals, such as those that distributed pamphlets, ribbon making machines, and a robot named Putan that solved pre-built mazes.
In August 1973, American game company Atari began establishing a series of divisions in Asia, one of which was named Atari Japan. Its president, Kenichi Takumi, approached Nakamura in early 1974 to have his business become the distributor of Atari games across Japan. Nakamura, already planning global expansion following his company's success, agreed to the deal. In part due to employee theft, Atari Japan was a financial disaster and nearly collapsed in its first few years of operation.
When Takumi stopped showing up to work, the company was handed to Hideyuki Nakajima, a former employee of the Japan Art Paper Company. Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, whose company was already struggling in America, chose to sell the Japanese division. His fixer, Ron Gordon, was given the task of finding the buyer for Atari Japan. After being turned down by Sega and Taito, Gordon's offer was accepted by Nakamura for 296 million, though Nakamura informed Bushnell his company was unable to pay the money by the deadline. With no other takers for Atari Japan, Bushnell ultimately allowed Nakamura to only pay $550,000 and then $250,000 a year for three years. The acquisition allowed Nakamura Seisakusho to distribute Atari games across Japan, and would make it one of the country's largest arcade game companies.
The Atari Japan purchase was not an immediate success, in part due to the medal game fad of the 1970s. While Nakamura Seisakusho saw some success with imports such as Kee Games's Tank, the Japanese video game industry's decrease in popularity did not make them as profitable as hoped. The market became more viable once restrictions on medal games were imposed by the Japanese government in 1976, as Nakamura Seisakusho began returning higher profits; its import of Atari's Breakout was so successful that it led to rampant piracy in the industry. By the end of the year, Nakamura Seisakusho was one of Japan's leading video game companies.
Galaxian, Pac-Man, and arcade success (1977–1984)
Nakamura Seisakusho changed its corporate name to Namco in June 1977. It opened a division in Hong Kong named Namco Enterprises Asia, which maintained video arcades and amusement centers. As Namco's presence in Japan was steadily rising, Nakajima suggested to Nakamura that he open a division in the United States to increase worldwide brand awareness. Nakamura agreed to the proposal, and on September 1, 1978, established Namco-America in Sunnyvale, California. With Nakajima as its president and Satashi Bhutani as vice president, Namco-America's aim was to import games and license them to companies such as Atari and Bally Manufacturing. Namco-America would release a few non-video arcade games itself, such as Shoot Away.As the video game industry prospered in Japan during the 1970s with the release of Taito's Space Invaders, Namco turned its attention towards making its own video games. While its licensed Atari games were still profitable, sales were decreasing and the quality of the hardware used began deteriorating. Per the recommendation of company engineer Shigekazu Ishimura, the company retrofitted its Ōta manufacturing facility into a small game division and purchased old stock computers from NEC for employees to study.
Namco released Gee Bee, its first original game, in October 1978. Designed by new hire Toru Iwatani, it is a video pinball game that incorporates elements from Breakout and similar "block breaker" clones. Though Gee Bee fell short of the company's sales expectations and was unable to compete with games such as Space Invaders, it allowed Namco to gain a stronger foothold in the video game market.
In 1979, Namco published its first major hit Galaxian, one of the first video games to incorporate RGB color graphics, score bonuses, and a tilemap hardware model. Galaxian is considered historically important for these innovations, and for its mechanics building off those in Space Invaders. It was released in North America by Midway Manufacturing, the video game division of Bally, where it became one of its best-selling games and formed a relationship between Midway and Namco.
The space shooter genre became ubiquitous by the end of the decade, with games such as Galaxian and Space Invaders becoming commonplace in Japanese amusement centers. As video games often depicted the killing of enemies and shooting of targets, the industry possessed a predominately male playerbase. Toru Iwatani began work on a maze video game that was targeted primarily towards women, with simplistic gameplay and recognizable characters. Alongside a small team, he created a game named Puck Man, where players controlled a character that had to eat dots in an enclosed maze while avoiding four ghosts that pursued them.
Iwatani based the gameplay off eating and designed its characters with soft colors and simplistic facial features. Puck Man was test-marketed in Japan on May 22, 1980 and given a wide-scale release in July. It was only a modest success; players were more accustomed to the shooting gameplay of Galaxian as opposed to Puck Mans visually distinctive characters and gameplay style. In North America, it was released as Pac-Man in November 1980. Pac-Mans simplicity and abstract characters made it a fixture in popular culture, spawning a multi-million-selling media franchise.
Namco regularly released several successful games throughout the early 1980s. It published Galaga, the follow-up to Galaxian, in 1981 to critical acclaim, usurping its predecessor in popularity with its fast-paced action and power-ups. 1982 saw the release of Pole Position, a racing game that is the first to use a real racetrack and helped laydown the foundations for the racing genre. It released Dig Dug the same year, a maze chaser that allowed players to create their own mazes.
Namco's biggest post-Pac-Man success was the vertical-scrolling shooter Xevious in 1983, designed by new-hire Masanobu Endō. Xeviouss early usage of pre-rendered visuals, boss fights, and a cohesive world made it an astounding success in Japan, recording record-breaking sales figures that had not been seen since Space Invaders. The game's success led to merchandise, tournament play, and the first video game soundtrack album. The same year, Namco released Mappy, an early side-scrolling platformer, and the Pole Position sequel Pole Position II.
Endō went on to design The Tower of Druaga a year later, a maze game that helped establish the concept for the action role-playing game. Druagas design influenced games such as Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda. 1984 also saw the release of Pac-Land, a Pac-Man-themed platform game that paved the way for similar games such as Super Mario Bros., and Gaplus, a moderately successful update to Galaga. The success of Namco's arcade games prompted it to launch its own print publication, Namco Community Magazine NG, to allow its fans to connect with developers.