NAMCO USA INC. history

In 1959 the company would change its name to Nakamura Manufacturing Co, Ltd. (which is the basis of the future name Namco).

During the leadup to that, Namco would famously purchase Atari’s Japanese branch from Nolan Bushnell for $500,000 (shockingly high compared to Sega’s offer of $50,000) in 1974 which allowed Namco to distribute Atari’s games in Japan for 10 years in their own arcades.

Their first release was Gee Bee in 1978, a sort of hybrid between pinball, Breakout, and Pong designed by Toru Iwatani.

Almost all of Namco’s early console games were based on their arcade hits, with their first Famicom release being Galaxian in 1984.

Pole Position received several sequels, most notably with 1987’s Final Lap which was the first multi-player, multi-cabinet competitive game.

Namco rise to superstardom in 3D fighting games would start in 1994 after the company brought in Seiichi Ishii from Sega, who had previously worked as the designer for the groundbreaking Virtua Fighter.

On September 29, 2005, Namco merged with toy and media giant Bandai to form Namco Bandai Holdings, making it one of the largest game and media companies in Japan.

Since opening at the end of 2013, over 5,000 children have visited the Centre.

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