Masaya nakamura namco high
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Above: Puck Monster Unit. Photo courtesy of Retro Games UK
The January 30th news that Masaya Nakamura, founder of video game company Namco, had died back on the 22nd probably didn’t hit as hard as Nintendo president Satoru Iwata’s passing in 2015, for a lot of people. Perhaps that’s understandable—Iwata was a well-known figure, died young of a terrible illness, and presided over Mario and the Mushroom Kingdom. Those properties are as big as a Disney franchise today, successfully evolving over generations, while many of Namco’s biggest brands, like Pac-Man, Ridge Racer and Galaxian/Galaga, feel curiously archaic by comparison.
Perhaps that’s just in my head, I don’t know. It’s not like Namco—now Bandai Namco Entertainment following a 2006 merger—isn’t publishing contemporary heavyweights, including Dragon Ball and Tekken games and, in the West, the Dark Souls series. But certainly, when I think of Namco, I think of the 1980s, and arcades with stand-up cabinets, cigarette burn marks and sticky floors. All of the stereotypes you’ve read before, in other nostalgic posts—but stereotypes because they were true scenarios, at least for me.
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And I think of Pac-Man. Mo
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Masaya Nakamura, founder and leader of NAMCO through the Pac-Man years, was among the inductees of the newly-created Amusement Industry Hall of Fame.
In June 1955, Nakamura founded Nakamura Seisakusho and began creating coin-operated rides for department store rooftops across Japan. The starting point for Nakamura Seisakusho consisted of two mechanical horses on the roof of the Matsuya department store in Yokohama.
He broke into the arcade industry in 1974 after purchasing the Japanese branch of Atari and released popular Atari games throughout Japan through his company, which was now named NAMCO.
Under Nakamura’s leadership, NAMCO expanded its business endeavors to amusement facilities, theme parks, arcade games and home video game software. One of these ventures was the maze-action video game phenomenon known as Pac-Man (also inducted into the Amusement Industry Hall of Fame as one of the inaugural games). This simple yet enticing game exploded in popularity and Nakamura assisted each step of the way, quickly becoming known as “The Father of Pac-Man.”
After years of indispensable contributions to the amusement industry led by Nakamura, NAMCO merged with renowned toy manufacturer, BANDAI Co., and became the Bandai Namco Group. Thanks to Nakamura’s strong commitmen
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ARCADE PRESS
In picture mid-1990s, Namco’s prospects seemed bright. Come across successful ventures around say publicly globe chance on its world-renowned amusement developments— Namco uniform had a hand amuse amusement, ability arcades skull theme parks.
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