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Taito

From vodka and jukeboxes to Space Invaders and Bubble Bobble

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Michael Kogan founded Taito in 1953 to import vending machines and jukeboxes. Its engineer Tomohiro Nishikado turned it to video games in the 1970s and made Space Invaders in 1978. After a lean spell in the early 1980s Taito's own designers produced Bubble Bobble, Arkanoid, Darius, Operation Wolf and Chase H.Q., which reached British home computers through Imagine, Firebird and Ocean. Square Enix bought the company in 2005; it still runs arcades and makes games.

For its first twenty years Taito had nothing to do with video games. Michael Kogan, a Ukrainian businessman in Japan, founded the Taito Trading Company in 1953 to import vending machines and jukeboxes into post-war Japan; Wireframe adds that it also distilled and sold vodka. It moved into making its own machines and, in the 1970s, into a new kind of coin-op. Its engineer Tomohiro Nishikado designed many of its early video games, and in 1978 he gave it Space Invaders. The American press barely knew the company. Electronic Games introduced it to readers in 1981 as “a then-small Pachinko company”.

Fast facts

Into video games

Taito’s first video games followed Atari’s. Wireframe names Astro Race, a copy of Atari’s Space Race, and Pong variations such as Davis Cup, Soccer and Elepong. Many were Nishikado’s. He had joined as an engineer, and he built them from logic chips, without a microprocessor. Speed Race (1974) was a driving game with a wheel and a road that scrolled down the screen. Western Gun put two cowboys on either side of the screen, and Taito licensed it to Midway, which sold it in America as Gun Fight.

Space Invaders

Space Invaders came out in Japan in July 1978, and Nishikado had built almost all of it himself: design, graphics, program and hardware. Its invaders fired back and marched towards the player, and it set off what Japan called the “invader game” boom. Electronic Games reported that within a year Taito had installed over 100,000 machines and taken over $600 million. Midway, Bally’s coin-operated game division, bought the American rights, and in 1980 Atari bought the home rights.

Electronic Games also said the Bank of Japan had had to triple its production of 100-yen coins. That story is less solid than the sales. Nishikado himself said, “I don’t know whether the coins actually became less common because of the game,” and Retro Gamer files the shortage among the game’s urban myths. The Space Invaders entry sets out the evidence.

Lean years and a revival

Retro Gamer describes what the money did. Taito invested heavily in video games, set up Taito America in 1979 to handle North American distribution, and licensed American games such as Amstar’s Phoenix and Williams’ Defender for Japan. To keep up with demand it sub-contracted smaller Japanese companies, among them Data East, SNK and Nintendo. Wireframe counts dozens of Taito arcade releases in 1980 alone, including forgotten oddities such as Safari Rally.

After the American market collapsed in 1983 Taito concentrated on Japan, and its own designers struggled. Retro Gamer judged much of their work of the period “very basic and generic”, and said that even minor hits such as Elevator Action and Arkanoid had done little to dent the popularity of rival hits such as Capcom’s Ghosts ’n Goblins. It turned to outside developers again, sub-contracting Toaplan to make vertical shoot-’em-ups such as Flying Shark, and distributed Technos’s Renegade and Double Dragon outside Japan.

The change came from Fukio Mitsuji, whose Bubble Bobble (1986) was, in Retro Gamer’s words, Taito’s in-house team’s “first worldwide success since Space Invaders”. Two players, as the dinosaurs Bub and Bob, trapped monsters in bubbles through 100 screens, and Mitsuji said they had to play together to reach the true ending. He followed it with Rainbow Islands (1987), which scrolls up the screen and gives its hero rainbows for weapons and platforms. Other Taito games of the period each had a hook of their own: Darius spread one shoot-‘em-up across three screens set side by side; Operation Wolf fixed a replica machine gun to the cabinet; Chase H.Q. put the player in a Porsche with orders to ram criminals’ cars off the road. In 1987 Taito formed Zuntata, its sound team and in-house band, and in 1989 it moved most of its games onto a single 68000-based board, the F2 system, to cut the cost of designing hardware for each game.

On British home computers

Taito’s games reached Spectrum and Commodore 64 owners under British labels. Imagine published Arkanoid. Firebird published Bubble Bobble, and ZZAP!64 gave the Commodore 64 version 97% in October 1987, calling it “a rare and beautiful occasion when a great arcade machine is perfectly converted”. Graftgold converted Rainbow Islands for Firebird’s owner, Telecomsoft, but after MicroProse bought Telecomsoft the deal with Taito fell through and the conversions could not be released. In March 1990 ACE reported that Ocean had signed an agreement with Taito for the home computer rights and bought Graftgold’s code for a sum “rumoured to be in the region of £50,000”. Ocean was already converting Taito’s coin-ops: Operation Wolf, and Chase H.Q., which CRASH gave 95% in December 1989.

After the golden age

Taito carried on into the 1990s with Puzzle Bobble (1994), sold in the West as Bust-a-Move, and tried and abandoned a satellite-fed games console, the WoWoW, shown at the 1992 Tokyo Toy Show. Wikipedia records that Michael Kogan died in 1984, when his son Abraham became chairman, and that Taito joined the Kyocera group in 1986. In 2004 Edge described its Type X arcade board as “essentially a modified PC running an embedded version of Windows XP”, and noted that Taito was building an arcade version of Half-Life 2 on it.

In 2005 Square Enix announced that it would buy Taito, and it owned all of the company by March 2006. In 2010 Square Enix reorganised it into a new Taito Corporation, which took over the group’s arcade business. Taito remains part of Square Enix Holdings. In March 2026 it reported 846 employees; it runs amusement centres, builds and maintains arcade machines, runs online crane games, and makes games and toys. It also looks after its back catalogue: in 2022 it launched the Egret II Mini, a small arcade cabinet preloaded with its older games.

Sources

  • Wireframe, issue 29, December 2019, pp. 50–53, “Taito’s arcade golden age”: Kogan and the Taito Trading Company, vending machines, jukeboxes and vodka; Astro Race, Davis Cup, Soccer and Elepong; Nishikado; dozens of games in 1980; publishing Toaplan and Technos games; the WoWoW and the 1992 Tokyo Toy Show; Bubble Bobble, Darius, Operation Wolf, Rainbow Islands, Chase H.Q. and Puzzle Bobble with their years (it dates Darius to 1986); Fukio Mitsuji.
  • Retro Gamer, issue 45, 2007, Mike Bevan, feature on Taito’s F series arcade hardware: the 1953 start; investment after Space Invaders; Taito America in 1979; licensing Phoenix and Defender; sub-contracting Data East, SNK and Nintendo; the effect of the 1983 crash; “very basic and generic” games and the “minor hits”; sub-contracting Toaplan for Flying Shark; Bubble Bobble as the first worldwide in-house success since Space Invaders; Zuntata; the F2 system.
  • Retro Gamer, issue 117, August 2013, pp. 57–62, Stuart Hunt, “Invasion of the coin snatcher”: Nishikado’s logic IC games, Speed Race and Western Gun; release in July 1978; the coin shortage among the “urban myths”.
  • Retro Gamer Collection, vol. 4 (2010), pp. 247–251, “The Making of: Space Invaders”: Nishikado’s work on the game and “I don’t know whether the coins actually became less common”.
  • Electronic Games, vol. 1 no. 1, Winter 1981, p. 31: “a then-small Pachinko company”; 100,000 machines and $600 million; the claimed tripling of 100-yen production; Midway’s American rights; Atari’s home rights in 1980.
  • Wireframe, issue 66, September 2022, p. 22: Speed Race, 1974. Retro Gamer, issue 112, March 2013, and Edge, issue 116, November 2002: Western Gun licensed to Midway as Gun Fight.
  • Eben Upton and others, Code the Classics, vol. 1 (Raspberry Pi Press, 2019), p. 50: Fukio Mitsuji on Bubble Bobble and its true ending.
  • Sinclair User, issue 61, April 1987, p. 86, and CRASH, issue 39, April 1987: Darius at the ATEI show in London in January 1987. Edge, issue 30, March 1996, p. 55: Darius “first graced Japanese arcades in 1987”. The Edge’s Darius+ advertisement, Computer and Video Games, issue 102, May 1990, p. 15: “Darius (c) 1987 Taito”.
  • ZZAP!64, issue 30, October 1987, p. 12: Bubble Bobble (Firebird, £8.95), 97%. ZZAP!64, issue 24, April 1987: Arkanoid review (Imagine, £8.95).
  • ACE, issue 30, March 1990: the MicroProse deal falling through; Ocean’s agreement with Taito and purchase of Graftgold’s Rainbow Islands code.
  • CRASH, issue 71, December 1989: Chase H.Q., 95%.
  • Edge, issue 144, Christmas 2004: Type X as a modified PC; the Half-Life 2 arcade machine.
  • Electronic Gaming Monthly, issue 197, November 2005, p. 51: “Square Enix announced that it will purchase publisher Taito”.
  • “Taito”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): Kogan’s death in 1984 and his son Abraham as chairman, Kyocera in 1986, Square Enix’s shareholding in 2005 and 2006, the 2010 reorganisation, the Egret II Mini in 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taito
  • Taito Corporation, company overview (web): founding date, employees, businesses, Square Enix Holdings. https://www.taito.co.jp/corporate/about/

See also

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