was a Japanese

publishing company Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

based in

Chiyoda, Tokyo , known as Chiyoda City in English,
." ''City of Chiyoda''. Retrieved on December 28, 2008. is a S ...

. It became a subsidiary of

Kadokawa Group Holdings , formerly is a Japanese conglomerate based in Fujimi, Chiyoda, Tokyo. Created as a result of the merger of the original Kadokawa Corporation and Dwango Co., Ltd. on October 1, 2014, the company has holdings in entertainment (including a ...

in 2004, and merged with another Kadokawa subsidiary MediaWorks on April 1, 2008, becoming

ASCII Media Works , formerly , is a Japanese Publishing, publisher and brand company of Kadokawa Future Publishing headquartered in Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. It originally formed on April 1, 2008, as a result of a Mergers and acquisitions, merger bet ...

. The company published '' Monthly ASCII'' as the main publication. ASCII is best known for creating the '' Derby Stallion'' video game series, the

MSX MSX is a standardized home computer architecture, announced by ASCII Corporation on June 16, 1983. It was initially conceived by Microsoft as a product for the Eastern sector, and jointly marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi, the director at ASCII Corpo ...

computer, and the ''

RPG Maker ''RPG Maker'', known in Japan as , is a series of programs for the development of role-playing video games (RPGs) with genre-driven varieties as well as machinima, originally created by the Japanese group ASCII. The Japanese name, ''Tsukūru'', ...

'' line of programming software.

History

1977–1990: Founding and first projects

ASCII was founded in 1977 by

Kazuhiko Nishi is a Japanese businessman and personal computer pioneer. Nishi's father ran a private school. Nishi attended Waseda University but dropped out to help found the first Japanese computer magazine, ''I/O''. Shortly thereafter he launched ''ASCII' ...

, Akio Gunji and Keiichiro Tsukamoto. The name was taken from the

ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...

code that was referred to a computer character set. Originally the publisher of a magazine with the same name, ''

'', talks between

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...

and Nishi led to the creation of Microsoft's first overseas sales office, ASCII Microsoft, in 1978.Quote from Bill Gates' ''The Road Ahead'', found in In 1980, ASCII made 1.2 billion yen of sales from licensing

Microsoft BASIC Microsoft BASIC is the foundation software product of the Microsoft company and evolved into a line of BASIC interpreters and compiler(s) adapted for many different microcomputers. It first appeared in 1975 as Altair BASIC, which was the first v ...

. It was 40 percent of Microsoft's sales, and Nishi became Microsoft's Vice President of Sales for Far East. In 1983, ASCII and Microsoft introduced the

, a standardized specification for 8-bit home computers. In 1984, ASCII entered the semiconductor business, followed by a further expansion into commercial online service in 1985 under the brand of ASCII-NET. As the popularity of home video game systems soared in the 1980s, ASCII became active in the development and publishing of software and peripherals for popular consoles such as the

Family Computer The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on 15 July 1983 as the and was later released as the redesigned NES in several test markets in the U ...

and

Mega Drive The Sega Genesis, known as the outside North America, is a 16-bit Fourth generation of video game consoles, fourth generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega. It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master Sys ...

. After Microsoft's public stock offering in 1986, Microsoft founded its own Japanese subsidiary, Microsoft Co., Ltd., traded as Microsoft Kabushiki Kaisha (MSKK), and dissolved its partnership with ASCII. At around the same time, the company was also obliged to reform itself as a result of its aggressive diversification in the first half of the 1980s. The company went public in 1989.

1989–2000: Satellites and later projects

ASCII's revenue in its fiscal year ending March 1996 was 56 billion yen, broken down by sectors: publications (52.5% or 27.0 billion yen), game entertainment (27.8% or 14.3 billion yen), systems and semiconductors (10.8% or 6 billion yen) and others. Despite its struggles to remain focused on its core businesses, the company continued to suffer from accumulated debts, until an arrangement was made that CSK Corporation would execute a major investment into ASCII in 1997. In the mid-1990s, ASCII acquired the company Something Good, and renamed it to ASCII Something Good, through which they developed three

Sega Saturn The is a home video game console developed by Sega and released on November 22, 1994, in Japan, May 11, 1995, in North America, and July 8, 1995, in Europe. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it is the successor to the succes ...

games: '' AI Shogi'' (1995), '' AI Igo'' (1997), ''AI Shogi 2'' (1998). ASCII originally used the name Nexoft on early American releases. In 1991, they renamed Nexoft to ASCII Entertainment, although releases around this time used the Asciiware name. To focus on supporting the interactive entertainment channel in America, startup company

Agetec Agetec Inc. ("ASCII Game Entertainment Technology") was an American video game publishing company that was best known for bringing Japanese titles to the United States. The company was formed through ASCII Corporation, spinning off their American ...

(for "Ascii Game Entertainment Technology") was spun off as an independent corporation in 1998 and later became a fully independent publisher one year later. Co-founder Tsukamoto had left ASCII to create a company of his own in 1992, named Impress.

2000–2008: Ownership changes and dissolution

On November 26, 2001, CSK Corporation and Unison Capital Partners L.P. announced the approval of transferring the control of its subsidiary ASCII to Unison Capital Partners L.P., effective on March 30, 2002, as part of a strategy to focus CSK's operations on B2B enterprises. The transfer was approved on December 21, 2001. As a part of deal, ASCII's outstanding debt owed to CSK was forgiven, and under Unison's control, the ASCII's Enterbrain and IT publishing divisions would maintain autonomy, while ASCII was restructured to concentrate on PC and IT publishing businesses. On May 28, 2002, Unison Media Partners announced ASCII became a fully owned subsidiary of via share exchange, and ASCII would be delisted, effective on October 1, 2002. On November 18, 2002, the Astroarts subsidiary was renamed to ASCII, while ASCII was renamed to MediaLeaves. The former Astroarts subsidiary would inherit the publishing business of the former ASCII. On January 29, 2004, Unison Capital Partners, L.P. announced the sale of ASCII's parent company MediaLeaves to

, to be completed in March 2004. On September 27, 2007,

announced the merger between subsidiaries MediaWorks and ASCII under the name

, effective on April 1, 2008. The merger was approved in 2008. On January 10, 2010, the formerly named ASCII company MediaLeaves was merged into Enterbrain, dissolving the last of the ASCII entity.

Products

MSX

MSX is a standardized

home computer Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a s ...

architecture, announced by Microsoft and ASCII on June 16, 1983. It was conceived and marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi, then vice-president at Microsoft Japan and director at ASCII Corporation. Nishi conceived the project as an attempt to create unified standards among various home computing system manufacturers of the period. MSX systems were popular in Japan and several other countries. It is difficult to determine how many MSX computers were sold worldwide, but eventually, 5 million MSX-based units were sold in Japan alone. Despite Microsoft's involvement, few MSX-based machines were released in the United States. Before the great success of

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and releases both video games and video game consoles. The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi ...

, MSX was the platform for which major Japanese game studios such as

Konami , commonly known as Konami, , is a Japanese multinational entertainment company and video game developer and video game publisher, publisher headquartered in Chūō, Tokyo, Chūō, Tokyo. The company also produces and distributes trading card ...

and

Hudson Soft was a Japanese video game company known for releasing numerous titles across video game consoles, home computers, and mobile phones. Headquartered in the Midtown Tower in Tokyo, it also maintained an office in the Hudson Building in Sapporo. F ...

produced video games. The ''Metal Gear'' series, for example, was first written for MSX hardware.

Notes

References

External links

Archived ASCII Corporation page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ascii (Company) ASCII Media Works Book publishing companies in Tokyo Video game companies of Japan Former Kadokawa Corporation subsidiaries Magazine publishing companies of Japan MSX Defunct video game companies of Japan Publishing companies established in 1977 Publishing companies disestablished in 2008 Mass media in Tokyo Japanese companies established in 1977 Japanese companies disestablished in 2008 Video game companies established in 1977 Video game companies disestablished in 2008 Video game development companies Video game publishers