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Namco

From children's rides to Pac-Man

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Masaya Nakamura's amusement company started in 1955 with children's rides, bought Atari's failing Japanese arm in 1974, and made Galaxian, Pac-Man, Pole Position and Xevious. It was one of the first companies Nintendo let make Famicom games, owned Atari Games in the mid-1980s, and later built arcade machines on Sony's PlayStation hardware, which carried Ridge Racer and Tekken into homes. In 2005 it combined with the toy company Bandai. Nakamura died in 2017; Namco's games and arcades carry on under the Bandai Namco name.

In 1974 Atari’s Japanese subsidiary was losing money, and Nolan Bushnell wanted rid of it. In David Sheff’s account, Sega, then a maker of jukeboxes and pinball tables, bid $50,000. Masaya Nakamura, whose company built coin-operated rides for children, offered $800,000, sixteen times as much. The bid was talked down to $500,050, and it still took Nakamura two years to pay off the debt that came with the company. Six years later his company, by then called Namco, released Pac-Man.

Fast facts

  • Founded: 1955, by Masaya Nakamura, as Nakamura Manufacturing.
  • Early business: coin-operated children’s rides.
  • Into video games: bought Atari Japan in 1974, which gave it the right to sell Atari’s games in Japan.
  • Arcade hits: Galaxian (1979), Pac-Man (1980), Galaga (1981), Dig Dug and Pole Position (1982), Xevious (1983).
  • Home consoles: one of Nintendo’s first Famicom licensees, from 1984.
  • Later: owned Atari Games from 1985 to 1987; built arcade boards on Sony’s PlayStation hardware from 1994.
  • Since 2005: part of Namco Bandai Holdings, renamed Bandai Namco Holdings in 2014.
  • Founder’s death: Masaya Nakamura died in January 2017, aged 91.

Rides, then Atari

Nakamura started his company in 1955, and for its first two decades it built rides. Edge, visiting in 1994, described the start as “small beginnings, manufacturing kiddies’ rides”. Sheff says Nakamura saw Atari Japan as a way to “instantly expand his small kiddie-ride company”. Sheff dates the purchase to 1972, the year Atari itself was founded; Retro Gamer and Wireframe both put it in 1974, when Atari was shedding its Japanese operation.

What Nakamura bought was a distribution business. The deal made his company the exclusive seller of Atari’s games in Japan for ten years. It opened arcades full of Atari machines, bought the rights to other games, and, by Sheff’s account, quintupled its earnings. It also kept Hide Nakajima, the manager Atari had hired to run its Japanese office. Nakajima built up Namco’s international sales and in 1978 opened its American subsidiary, Namco America, across the road from Atari’s old headquarters in Sunnyvale.

The company had used “Namco”, short for Nakamura Manufacturing Company, as a brand since 1971, and took it as its formal name in 1977. Its first video games came soon after. Toru Iwatani, who joined in 1977, started on what Edge called “video pinball games”: Gee Bee, Bomb Bee and Cutie Q. Edge’s 1994 list of Namco’s arcade releases begins with Galaxian in October 1979.

Galaxian and Pac-Man

Galaxian arrived in the wake of Space Invaders, and Edge later credited its colourful graphics with “injecting skilful gameplay into the overpopulated space invaders market”. In America Midway built and sold it under licence, as it had Space Invaders for Taito. Video Games reported in December 1982 that Midway had sold 45,000 Galaxian machines, after 72,000 Space Invaders.

The next Namco game Midway took on did far better. Namco offered it Puck-Man in early 1980. Bally’s president, Robert Mullane, did not want it (“Anyway, who plays a maze game?”), but Midway went ahead, and the game reached America as Pac-Man. By December 1982 Midway had built 190,000 Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man machines. Namco America’s lawyer, Dennis Wood, licensed the characters for merchandise and the home rights to Atari. The Pac-Man entry tells that story.

The 1980s arcade list that followed includes Galaga (1981), Dig Dug (1982), Pole Position (1982), Xevious (1983), Pac-Land (1984), Metro-Cross (1985) and Rolling Thunder (1986). In America several arrived under other companies’ names. Atari took Dig Dug, its first licence of another company’s coin-op, and manufactured Pole Position: Electronic Games listed Pole Position under Atari at the top of its arcade chart through the autumn of 1983, while Atari’s own advertisements added the small print that the game was “created and licensed by Namco”.

The Famicom

When Nintendo opened its Famicom to other companies, Sheff writes, Namco was the first company it contacted. With Hudson it became one of the first two licensees, and it was one of six early licensees allowed to manufacture their own cartridges. Edge put the date at 1984. The Famicom Xevious sold 1.5 million copies, and both Sheff and Edge report that it paid for a new office building, nicknamed the Xevious Building.

Atari Games

After the 1983 crash, Warner split Atari. It sold the home computer and console business to Jack Tramiel and in 1985 sold control of the arcade business, Atari Games, to Namco for a little over $10 million, according to Sheff. Namco got the makers of Marble Madness and Gauntlet, a factory in Ireland and about 230 staff. In 1987 it sold the company on to Warner Communications and a group led by Nakajima, who then left Namco’s board. The Atari entry covers what happened next.

How Namco reached Britain

British players met Namco’s games through licensees, and for most of the 1980s the name on the box was the licensee’s. Atari’s software label, Atarisoft, advertised Pole Position for the Commodore 64, BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum in CRASH in January 1985, alongside Galaxian and Ms. Pac-Man. Namco appeared only in the trademark notice at the foot of the page.

By 1988 the originator was being named alongside the publisher. In January that year a U.S. Gold advertisement promised, for early 1988, “HALLS OF KYROS (SEGA), ROLLING THUNDER (NAMCO), ROADBLASTERS (ATARI GAMES)”. The same month CRASH’s index credited Metrocross to “US Gold/Namco”, beside Pole Position under Atarisoft alone, and its news pages announced Argus Press Software’s Pac-Land as an “Atari/Namco coin-op conversion”. Pacmania came from Grandslam.

PlayStation arcades

Namco never sold a console of its own. Edge reported in 1994 that it had signed with Sony in November 1993 to write games for the PlayStation, and in return would use PlayStation hardware in its arcade machines. The deal, Edge wrote, “allows the coin-op specialist to produce product for the home machine as well as develop arcade machines using the PlayStation technology”. Namco was then one of only two companies building coin-ops on the PlayStation chipset; the other was Konami.

The board that came out of it was the System 11, “jointly created by Sony and Namco”, and its first game was Tekken, which Edge previewed in January 1995 as an arcade game to be “eventually … ported to the PlayStation”. Ridge Racer, which ran on Namco’s own System 22 arcade board, was converted for the home machine; in November 1994 Edge reported Namco’s confirmation that it would be ready for the PlayStation’s launch.

Tekken, Ridge Racer and Soulcalibur

The Sony deal carried Namco’s arcade games into millions of homes. Wireframe, looking back in 2019, wrote that the first Ridge Racer “put the PlayStation on the map, and Namco stuck with Sony’s machine for a long time”; the fourth home version, R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 (1998), was in its view “the perfect blend of styles for an arcade-with-depth game at home”. Tekken ran in arcades on the System 11 board, and Edge gave the PlayStation version 9/10 in 1995. Its sequel sold even better. In November 1996 Teruhisa Tokunaga, president of Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan, told Edge that “Tekken 2 in Japan has exceeded one million units”. Wireframe summed up the series: “It was popular in arcades – it was rather more than popular in the home.” The light-gun game Time Crisis (1995), with its pedal for ducking into cover, came from the same period.

The weapon-fighting game Soul Edge was followed in 1998 by Soulcalibur, which went not to the PlayStation but to Sega’s Dreamcast. Edge reviewed the Dreamcast version in October 1999: “The next generation has finally arrived. After picking up Soul Calibur, no one could deny that Namco’s latest creation is anything other than a work of art.”

Namco looked at a larger partner before it found one. In 2003, while Sega was in merger talks with the pachinko maker Sammy, Namco declared its own interest in Sega. Sammy ended up owning Sega instead (see the Sega entry).

Namco Bandai

In September 2005 Namco and the toy company Bandai combined under a new holding company, Namco Bandai Holdings. At that year’s Tokyo Game Show, Edge found Namco’s stand “largely unchanged by the recent Bandai Namco partnership”, busy with Xbox 360 launch games and a growing PSP line-up. The change came the next year. In 2006 Bandai’s home video game business and Namco’s home video game, arcade machine and mobile phone game businesses were merged into one company, Namco Bandai Games, and Namco’s amusement centres passed to a newly re-formed company that kept the Namco name. In 2014 the holding company changed its English name to Bandai Namco Holdings, and in 2015 the games company became Bandai Namco Entertainment.

For Wireframe, the merger ended the old company: Namco “had been changing for a time, but it was the merger that put the nail in the coffin”. The same article allowed that “Bandai Namco still pops out bangers on a relatively frequent basis”. Some were not its own. The company, then called Namco Bandai Games, published FromSoftware’s Dark Souls outside Japan in 2011, and Elden Ring in 2022, which Wireframe scored 95%. Namco’s own series carried on. Tekken 7 sold more than 11.8 million copies, the most in the series, and Tekken 8, released in January 2024, sold a million on its first day.

Arcades

Namco kept making coin-ops after the merger. Its drum game Taiko no Tatsujin began in arcades and had reached the PlayStation 2 in Japan by early 2003. In 2010, thirty years after Pac-Man, Namco Bandai released Pac-Man Battle Royale, a four-player cabinet built on Toru Iwatani’s Pac-Man Championship Edition, which Edge called “an astonishingly insightful reinvention”. Edge thought the new machine “likely to be a fixture in the few remaining arcades and the odd bar”.

The arcade business outlived the Namco company it came from. The amusement company formed in 2006 was later renamed Bandai Namco Amusement, and in April 2025 a new company, Bandai Namco Experience, took over the management of the business from it. Its game centres still carry the name: namco TOKYO, in the Tokyu Kabukicho Tower in Shinjuku, combines arcade and crane games with a bar and character shops.

Masaya Nakamura

In 1996 Edge listed him as Namco’s “Chairman & Founder” and quoted his motto: “Play is culture.” After the merger with Bandai he stayed on as an honorary adviser. He died on 22 January 2017, aged 91. At his request his wake and funeral were held privately with his family.

Sources

  • David Sheff, Game Over (GamePress edition, 1999), pp. 61–62 (the first Famicom licensees, Xevious), pp. 72–75 (Nakamura, the founding, Namco as Nintendo’s first contact) and pp. 238–242 (Atari Japan, Nakajima, Namco America, Atari Games).
  • Edge issue 8, May 1994, pp. 54–61: Namco feature: the founding and children’s rides, Namco’s list of arcade releases, Galaxian, the Famicom licence in 1984, Xevious and its building, the Sony agreement of November 1993, the System 22 and Ridge Racer.
  • Edge issue 66, Christmas 1998: Iwatani joining Namco in 1977 and his first games.
  • Retro Gamer, The Atari Book (2012): Atari offloading its Japanese operation to Nakamura Manufacturing at the end of 1974.
  • Wireframe issue 27, November 2019: “Nakamura Manufacturing purchased Atari Japan in 1974”.
  • Video Games vol. 1 no. 1, August 1982, pp. 23–26: Namco offering Puck-Man to Midway, Mullane’s objection, and Atari’s licence of Dig Dug.
  • Video Games vol. 1 no. 3, December 1982, pp. 52–54: “The House That Pac Built”: Midway’s sales of Space Invaders, Galaxian, Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man.
  • Electronic Games vol. 2 nos. 7–10, September–December 1983: arcade charts with Pole Position (Atari) at number one, and Atari advertisements crediting Namco.
  • CRASH issue 12, January 1985: Atarisoft advertisement.
  • CRASH issue 48, January 1988: index credits for Pole Position and Metrocross; Pac-Land news item and Argus advertisement.
  • Computer & Video Games issue 75 and ACE issue 4, January 1988: U.S. Gold advertisement.
  • CRASH issue 64, May 1989: Pacmania (Grandslam) in the readers’ chart.
  • Edge issue 14, November 1994: Namco and Konami as the companies developing coin-ops on the PlayStation chipset; Ridge Racer due for the launch.
  • Edge issue 15, December 1994: visit to Namco and the Sony agreement.
  • Edge issue 16, January 1995: Tekken and the System 11 board.
  • “Namco”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): the Namco brand from 1971, the formal renaming in 1977, and the 2005 merger with Bandai. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namco
  • Edge issue 21, June 1995: Tekken and the System 11 board. Edge issue 84, May 2000: look back at Edge’s 1995 reviews, including Tekken (PlayStation, 9/10).
  • Edge issue 38, November 1996: interview with Teruhisa Tokunaga, Sony Computer Entertainment (Tekken 2’s Japanese sales).
  • Edge issue 30, March 1996: industry profiles, Masaya Nakamura (“Play is culture”).
  • Edge issue 76, October 1999: Soul Calibur review (Dreamcast).
  • Edge issue 121, March 2003: Taiko no Tatsujin (PlayStation 2) review.
  • Edge issue 124, June 2003: Namco’s interest in Sega.
  • Edge issue 156, December 2005: Tokyo Game Show report.
  • Edge issue 219, October 2010: Pac-Man Battle Royale preview.
  • Edge issue 234, December 2011: Dark Souls review (publisher Namco Bandai).
  • Wireframe issue 27, November 2019, pp. 50–53: “Developer Profile: Namco” (Ridge Racer, Tekken, Time Crisis, Soulcalibur, the merger with Bandai).
  • Wireframe issue 61, March 2022: Elden Ring (Bandai Namco), 95%.
  • Bandai Namco Holdings, “History” (web, secondary): the 2005 holding company, Namco Bandai Games and the new Namco in 2006, the 2014 and 2015 renamings, Nakamura’s death on 22 January 2017 aged 91, and Bandai Namco Experience in 2025. https://www.bandainamco.co.jp/en/about/history/bandai-namco.html
  • “Bandai Namco Holdings”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): the holding company’s formation in September 2005. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandai_Namco_Holdings
  • “Bandai Namco Experience”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): Bandai Namco Amusement as the former Namco, and the April 2025 transfer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandai_Namco_Experience
  • Bandai Namco Amusement, “namco TOKYO” (web, secondary). https://bandainamco-am.co.jp/en/namco_tokyo/
  • Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe, press release, February 2024 (web, secondary): Tekken 8’s launch sales and Tekken 7’s total. https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/tekken/news/tekken-8-sells-over-2-million-copies-worldwide-the-first-month-after-launch
  • “Obituary: Namco founder and former president, Masaya Nakamura”, Game Developer, January 2017 (web, secondary): his death and his post as honorary adviser. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/obituary-namco-founder-and-former-president-masaya-nakamura
  • “Namco founder Masaya Nakamura dies at 91”, Gematsu, January 2017 (web, secondary): the private funeral. https://www.gematsu.com/2017/01/namco-founder-masaya-nakamura-dies-91

See also

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