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Bandai Namco Amusement America

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Bandai Namco Amusement America, Inc. is a company currently based in Itasca, Illinois. The company was founded as Namco-America Inc. in 1978, and currently develops and distributes Pac-Man arcade machines.

History[]

1980s[]

Namco-America was founded in June of 1978 in Sunnyvale, California. The company was formed by Satish Bhutami, a former Atari employee, who was encouraged to open an American branch of Japan-based Namco Ltd. by his industry friend, Hideyuki Nakajima.[1]

Namco-America found success in importing an arcade game called Shoot Away from 1977. However, Namco-America was significantly underfunded; the company did not even have a proper address (with the one used in marketing merely being Bhutami's home address), and was not given enough machines from Namco of Japan to keep up with demand. When Pac-Man was first released in Japan, Bhutami requested for Namco-America to be the game's distributor in the United States; however, Namco of Japan ultimately chose Bally Midway to be the publisher instead. Frustrated with all of this, Bhutami would leave the company in 1980 to work at Data East.[1][2] Namco-America did continue operation without Bhutami, though was continuously underfunded.

1990s and beyond[]

In 1990, as Namco's licensing contracts with Bally Midway and Atari Games were terminated, Namco-America became the main U.S. distributor of Namco's arcade games. Namco-America would also be granted a now-defunct subsidiary company, Atari Operations; later known as Namco USA, Inc. (among other names), the company operated arcade locations in the United States. A separate company, Namco Hometek Inc., was formed by Namco-America to handle publishing for the home video game market.[3]

In 2000, Namco-America released Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga - Class of 1981, an arcade machine combining Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga; this machine was very successful, and was later followed by a Pac-Man 25th Anniversary model in 2005. Namco-America would also release several Pac-Man redemption games, such as the 2003 game Capsule Factory. Most of Namco-America's Pac-Man-related releases were exclusive to and/or developed in the U.S.; with a few being imported from Japan, such as the Mario Kart Arcade GP series (which feature Pac-Man as a playable character).

Alongside their arcade operations, Namco-America handled releasing mobile games for the then-new mobile phone market. Namco-America's mobile output was heavily focused on Pac-Man, including both ports of the arcade games and brand-new releases.[3] Following the forming of Bandai Namco Holdings in 2006, the mobile team was split into a separate subsidiary, Namco Networks America, Inc.; though Namco-America was otherwise unaltered in terms of structure.

In 2005, Namco-America permitted the Chicago Gaming Company to manufacture a "home version" line of Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga machines; these were largely identical to the coin-operated versions, but lacked coin slots. Following legal issues surrounding the Ms. Pac-Man IP, arcade machines without coin slots were found to be a "loophole" allowing Namco to utilize Ms. Pac-Man without paying royalties; leading to Namco-America increasingly producing "home version" machine models on their own.

In 2014, Namco-America changed its company name to Bandai Namco Amusement America, Inc. The company continues to produce Pac-Man arcade games to this day, with an additional "Pac-Mancave" brand for "home version" models.

Pac-Man releases[]

Video arcade games[]

Mechanical/redemption games[]

Mobile games[]

Publishing later moved to Namco Networks; the following titles were released prior to the company split.

Mobile applications[]

Publishing later moved to Namco Networks; the following titles were released prior to the company split.

Cancelled games[]

  • Pac-Man's Ticket Factory (2000, redemption game; internally developed)
  • Pac-Man Crisis (2002, mobile game; was released in Japan and Europe despite U.S. cancellation)

Trivia[]

  • While classified as a division of the Japan-based Bandai Namco Amusement, Inc., there are very little shared operations between the Japanese and American divisions (unlike the regional divisions of Bandai Namco Entertainment, which share largely the same output).
  • Several of Atari's Pac-Man home console releases credit Namco-America on the cartridge labels, as Atari licensed the Pac-Man rights directly through Namco instead of Bally Midway.

References[]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 https://thehistoryofhowweplay.wordpress.com/2017/11/04/super-sales-six/
  2. ↑ "Pac-Man: Birth of an Icon", pages 121-122
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 https://web.archive.org/web/20040608203450/https://www.namcogames.com/about.php
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