Nintendo Co., Ltd. is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes and releases both video games and video game consoles.
Square Co., Ltd., also known under its international brand name SquareSoft, was a Japanese video game developer and publisher. It was founded in 1986 by Masafumi Miyamoto, who spun off part of his father's electronics company Den-Yu-Sha. Among its early employees were designers Hironobu Sakaguchi, Hiromichi Tanaka, Akitoshi Kawazu and Koichi Ishii, artist Kazuko Shibuya, programmer Nasir Gebelli, and composer Nobuo Uematsu. Initially focusing on action games, the team saw popular success with the role-playing video game Final Fantasy in 1987, which would lead to the franchise of the same name being one of its tentpole franchises. Later notable staff included directors Yoshinori Kitase and Takashi Tokita, designer and writer Yasumi Matsuno, artists Tetsuya Nomura and Yusuke Naora, and composers Yoko Shimomura and Masashi Hamauzu.
The Nintendo GameCube is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, in Europe on May 3, 2002, and in Australia on May 17, 2002. It is the successor to the Nintendo 64. As a sixth-generation console, the GameCube primarily competed with Sony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast and Microsoft's Xbox.
Hudson Soft Co., Ltd. was a Japanese video game company that released numerous games for video game consoles, home computers and mobile phones, mainly from the 1980s to the 2000s. It was headquartered in the Midtown Tower in Tokyo, with an additional office in the Hudson Building in Sapporo.
Mario Party is a party video game series featuring characters from the Mario franchise in which up to four local players or computer-controlled characters compete in a board game interspersed with minigames. Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, and directed by Kenji Kikuchi, the games are currently developed by Nintendo Cube and published by Nintendo, being previously developed by Hudson Soft. The series is known for its party game elements, including the often unpredictable multiplayer game modes that allow play with up to four, and sometimes eight, human players or CPUs.
Monolith Software Inc., trading as Monolith Soft, is a Japanese video game development studio originally owned by Namco until being bought out by Nintendo in 2007, best known for the Xenoblade Chronicles series of games. The company was founded in 1999 by Tetsuya Takahashi with the support and cooperation of Masaya Nakamura, the founder of Namco. Their first project was the Xenosaga series, a spiritual successor to the Square-developed Xenogears. Multiple Square staff would join Takahashi at Monolith Soft including Hirohide Sugiura and Yasuyuki Honne.
Artoon Co., Ltd. was a Japanese video game developer established in 1999. It became a subsidiary of AQ Interactive in May 2004 and became a wholly owned subsidiary in June 2005. The team was primarily affiliated in the United States with Microsoft Xbox and Xbox 360 projects, although they had also worked with Hudson Soft and Nintendo on other platforms.
Dentsu Group Inc. is a Japanese international advertising and public relations joint stock company headquartered in Tokyo. Dentsu is the largest advertising agency in Japan and the fifth largest advertising agency network in the world in terms of worldwide revenues.
AQ Interactive, Inc. was a Japanese video game developer and publisher. AQ stands for Artistic Quality. It was the parent company of the developers Artoon, Cavia and feelplus, and most recently the U.S. publisher Xseed Games. AQ Interactive and its subsidiaries produced games both under the AQ Interactive name, as well as developing for other publishers such as Microsoft Studios and Nintendo.
Vertical Force is a 1995 vertically scrolling shooter video game developed and published by Hudson Soft for the Virtual Boy. It was released in Japan in August 1995 and North America by Nintendo in December 1995. The player controls a starship, the Ragnarok, that must destroy a malfunctioning supercomputer on a human colony planet before it wipes out all of mankind. Gameplay is similar to Hudson's Star Soldier series, featuring power-up items that increase the player's abilities and parallax scrolling. The player can move their ship farther into the background to avoid enemies and obstacles in the way.
Marvelous Entertainment Inc. (MMV) was a multinational corporation that produced animation, music, video games and television series. MMV is known for its involvement in the Story of Seasons series. They merged with AQ Interactive in 2011 and became Marvelous AQL; the "AQL" was dropped later on.
Tube Slider is a 2003 racing video game developed by NDcube and published by NEC Interchannel for the GameCube. It was released only in North America; a Japanese release was planned but canceled for unknown reasons. The game takes place on Earth in the middle of the 21st century, where a new sport based around tube sliding was born out of people's desire for speed and competition, after hydrogen-based energy replaced fossil fuels in motorsports. The player can choose between one of eight futuristic formula vehicles, each one varying in terms of performance, and race against computer-controlled opponents across ten tracks divided into three sessions.
Koei Tecmo Holdings Co., Ltd. is a Japanese video game, amusement and anime holding company created in 2009 by the merger of Koei and Tecmo. Koei Tecmo Holdings owns several companies, the biggest one of those being its flagship video game developer and publisher Koei Tecmo Games that was founded in 1978 as Koei. Known as Tecmo Koei until the names were reversed in 2014, the company had occasionally used the "Koei" and "Tecmo" brand names on new video games for marketing purposes until 2016.
Wii Party is a party video game developed by NDcube and published by Nintendo for the Wii video game console. The game heavily borrows game play elements from the Mario Party series, another Nintendo franchise. It is also the first game in the Wii series that Shigeru Miyamoto did not produce. The game was released in Japan on July 8, 2010, in North America on October 3, 2010, in Australia on October 7, 2010, and in Europe on October 8, 2010. Wii Party was revealed by Satoru Iwata in a Financial Results Briefing on May 7, 2010. It received mixed to positive reviews from critics and sold 9.35 million copies worldwide as of September 2021. A sequel, Wii Party U, was released for the Wii U on October 25, 2013.
DeNA Co., Ltd. is a Japanese provider of mobile portal and e-commerce websites headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo. It owns the Mobage cell phone platform and also operates other services, including the e-commerce website DeNA Shopping.
DWANGO Co., Ltd. is a telecommunications and media company based in Japan, headed by Nobuo Kawakami. The company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation on October 1, 2014. The company was spun off from a U.S.-based service offering online multiplayer for video games, DWANGO, which was shut down in 1998. Dwango's majority shareholders until its merger with Kadokawa Corporation included Kawakami himself, Kadokawa Corporation, and Avex Group. Dwango runs the popular Japanese video sharing site Niconico. The company also is the 100% owner of the game developer Spike Chunsoft, which Dwango bought as the companies Spike and Chunsoft in 2005 when they were separated companies, before merging them in 2012.
Mario Party 10 is a 2015 party video game developed by NDcube and published by Nintendo for the Wii U video game console. It is the tenth home console release in the Mario Party series and a part of the larger Mario franchise. Featuring gameplay similar to the prior series entries, players compete against each other and computer-controlled characters to collect the most mini-stars, traversing a game board and engaging in minigames and other challenges. There are multiple game modes, including one where players traverse a board in a vehicle, sabotaging each other and making choices to collect the most mini-stars by the end. Mario Party 10 adds two modes over its predecessors: Bowser Party, where four players compete in a team against a fifth who controls Bowser on the Wii U GamePad, and Amiibo Party, where players use Amiibo figures. Their gameplay is interspersed by over 70 minigames with various play styles.
Paon DP Co., Ltd. (株式会社パオン・ディーピー) is a Japanese video game developer. The company was founded in August 2004 as DP Inc. and merged with Paon Corporation, Ltd. in March 2015 to form Paon DP.
EDION Corporation is a consumer electronics retailer chain in Japan. It was formerly a holding company that operated multiple chain brands. As of 2023, EDION is the fifth largest electronics and home appliance retailer, behind Yamada Denki, Bic Camera, K's Holdings, and Yodobashi Camera.
