Namco

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This article is about Namco, a Japanese video game company. For other Namcos, see Namco (disambiguation)

Namco Ltd.

Type	Private (subsidiary of Namco Bandai)
Founded	1955
Headquarters	Ōta, Tokyo, Japan Santa Clara, California, USA
Key people	Masaya Nakamura (Founder) Kyushiro Takagi (CEO)
Industry	Computer and video game industry
Products	(see List of Namco games)
Slogan	N/A
Website	Home page

Namco Ltd (株式会社ナムコ, Kabushiki Gaisha Namuko^?) is a company based in Japan, best known for developing video games. Some of the company's most famous games include Galaxian, Pac-Man, Klonoa, Rally-X, Galaga, Bosconian, Dig Dug, Pole Position, Xevious, Mappy, Soul Calibur, Time Crisis, Tekken, and the Ridge Racer. As of September 29, 2005, Namco was merged with leading Japanese toymaker Bandai to form Namco Bandai Holdings Inc, one of the largest entertainment companies in Japan.

1 History
2 See also
3 External links
- 3.1 External Developers worked with

[edit] History

Namco was founded in Tokyo in 1955, by Masaya Nakamura under the name Nakamura Manufacturing Ltd. It began by producing mechanical rocking-horses and similar children's rides, which were installed in a number of department stores in Yokohama and Nihonbashi. It continued this line of production through the 1960s, and expanded with the addition of rides modeled after Walt Disney characters in 1966.

After the company's brand name was changed to Namco in 1971, it acquired the Japanese division of Atari in 1974, thus bringing Namco into the coin-operated video game market. Namco Enterprises Asia Ltd. was established in Hong Kong and was soon followed by Namco America, Inc., based in California. In 1978, Namco released its first arcade video game Gee Bee which was designed by Toru Iwatani. He also designed two sequels, Bomb Bee and Cutie Q, which were released in 1979. The year 1980, saw the introduction of the company's most famous coin-operated arcade game, Pac-Man, which was also developed by Iwatani. The main character, Pac-Man, has now been made the company's official mascot. When Nintendo began producing its Famicom home console unit, Namco started the development of game titles for it, beginning with Galaxian, which had first been introduced to arcades in 1979.

Namco was the industry's first manufacturer to develop and release a multi-player, multi-cabinet competitive game, Final Lap, in 1987. This game allowed up to 8 players to compete when four 2-player cabinets were linked in a simple network. By 1988, the company's capital exceeded 5,500 million Yen. In 1989, another racing simulation game, Winning Run, was released; that same year, the company's expertise with driving simulation matured with the development of the Eunos Roadster Driving Simulator, a joint venture with the Mazda Motor Corporation, followed by an educational program for traffic safety developed with Mitsubishi.

In the 1990s, Namco began directly selling coin-operated arcade games in the United States through subsidiary Namco America. Sennichimae Plabo was opened in Osaka, featuring a new concept of large-scale arcade amusement, and Namco Wonder Eggs, a theme park, was opened in Tokyo. Additional amusement parks were opened, including Namco Wonder Park Sagamihara and Namco Wonder City.

In 1993, Namco merged its US arcade operation, Namco Operations, Inc., with the newly acquired Aladdin's Castle, Inc. to form Namco Cybertainment, Incorporated, bringing the company to the forefront as the largest arcade company in the world. In subsequent years, Namco Cybertainment, Inc. (NCI) purchased several other arcade operators, further strengthening the company's overall arcade operation. NCI now operates arcades under the names Time Out, CyberStation, Aladdin's Castle, Diamond Jim's, Space Port, and Pocket Change. Throughout the 2000's Namco Cybertainment has continued to grow. They are the only operator of national scope. They manage over 1,000 locations in forty-eight states, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. On any given day, customers play games over three-quarters of a million times in locations they manage. They have nearly 30,000 games in their inventory, far surpassing any other operator. If the games were stood end to end, they would stretch nearly 40 miles. Namco Cybertainment owns the largest number of the most popular manufactured games in North America, including Sega, Midway, Konami, ICE, and NAMCO AMERICA. They are generally a coin-op manufacturer's largest customer.

Also in 1993, Ridge Racer, a driving simulation game, entered arcades, featuring 3D computer graphics; the game was later released for the Sony PlayStation. Another of the company's most famous games, Tekken, was released in 1994, which was also soon ported to the PlayStation. In 1995 the game Soul Edge (Soul Blade in the PAL region) was released. This was the second game to feature weapons in a three-dimensional fighting environment on a console system (Battle Arena Toshinden was the first). With its Tekken and Soul Calibur franchises, Namco has been dominating the 3D fighting game market. Some light gun games were also released such as Point Blank and Time Crisis

In September 2005, Namco merged with Bandai to become "Namco Bandai Holdings", the 3rd largest video game entity in Japan. As such, Namco is now a part of the Namco Bandai Group.

In January 2006, a Namco Bandai subsidiary was established in the U.S. to handle mobile games in North America, called Namco Networks America Inc. Working with the new 'next-gen' platform, Namco is able to port many of their time-tested arcade games to cell phones. In March 2006, Namco Networks also opened an e-commerce operation, www.clubNAMCO.com offering official merchandise based on Namco games.

Namco is represented by the number "765" and this number or a variation like "7650" appears in several of their games. "7" in Japanese is "nana" shortened to "na"; "6" in Japanese is muttsu, shortened to "m"; "5" in Japanese is "go", changed to voiceless form "co". "765" = "na-m-co"