was a Japanese software development company that was in business from 1980 to 2003 based in

Sapporo is a Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, designated city in Hokkaido, Japan. Located in the southwest of Hokkaido, it lies within the alluvial fan of the Toyohira River, a tributary of the Ishikari River. Sapporo is the capital ...

Hokkaido is the list of islands of Japan by area, second-largest island of Japan and comprises the largest and northernmost prefectures of Japan, prefecture, making up its own list of regions of Japan, region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō fr ...

. They started as a

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

developer, releasing titles for various home computer platforms (including 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 ...

), but subsequently left the gaming business to focus solely on programming software and tools as they entered the 1990s.

History

The company was founded on May 2, 1980, under the name Computer Land Hokkaido, publishing video games for various home computers under the "7 Turkey" brand name. In 1984, they officially changed their name to dB-SOFT, taking their new name from the

decibel The decibel (symbol: dB) is a relative unit of measurement equal to one tenth of a bel (B). It expresses the ratio of two values of a Power, root-power, and field quantities, power or root-power quantity on a logarithmic scale. Two signals whos ...

(dB) unit. Some of the company's most commercially successful video games include '' Flappy'' (which has been released in over 20 versions) and '' Woody Poco''. dB-SOFT also published two pornographic games under the Macadamia Soft imprint: ''Macadam'' and ''177'' (the latter was banned from retail by the

National Diet , transcription_name = ''Kokkai'' , legislature = 215th Session of the National Diet , coa_pic = Flag of Japan.svg , house_type = Bicameral , houses = , foundation=29 November 1890(), leader1_type ...

due to its controversial premise in which the player's objective is to pursue and

rape Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse, or other forms of sexual penetration, carried out against a person without consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person ...

a fleeing woman). In addition to gaming software, dB-SOFT also produced programming tools such as ''dB-BASIC'' (a

BASIC Basic or BASIC may refer to: Science and technology * BASIC, a computer programming language * Basic (chemistry), having the properties of a base * Basic access authentication, in HTTP Entertainment * Basic (film), ''Basic'' (film), a 2003 film ...

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primaril ...

), ''P1.EXE'' (a word processor) and ''HOTALL'' (a web designing tool). On August 1, 2001, dB-SOFT ceased operation after being merged into NetFarm Communications (a company founded by Reiko Furuya, Sadayaki Furuya's wife). Their former office building was sold off in 2002.

Softography

Notes

References

External links

Official website

dB-SOFT
games available a
Project EGG

dB-SOFT
at

Giant Bomb ''Giant Bomb'' is an American video game website and wiki that includes personality-driven gaming videos, commentary, news and reviews, created by former ''GameSpot'' editors Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis. The website was voted by ''Time (maga ...

* Companies based in Sapporo Defunct video game companies of Japan Video game development companies Video game publishers Video game companies established in 1980 Video game companies disestablished in 2001 Japanese companies established in 1980 Japanese companies disestablished in 2001 {{Japan-videogame-company-stub