Video games developed in Japan

Video games are a major industry in Japan. Japanese game development is often identified with the golden age of video games, including Nintendo under Shigeru Miyamoto and Hiroshi Yamauchi, Sega during the same time period, Sony Computer Entertainment when it was based in Tokyo, and other companies such as Taito, Namco, Capcom, Square Enix, Konami, NEC, and SNK, among others.

The space is known for the catalogs of several major publishers, all of whom have competed in the video game console and video arcade markets at various points. Released in 1965, ''Periscope'' was a major arcade hit in Japan, preceding several decades of success in the arcade industry there. Nintendo, a former hanafuda playing card vendor, rose to prominence during the 1980s with the release of the home video game console called the Famicom or "Family Computer", which became a major hit as the Nintendo Entertainment System or "NES" internationally. Sony, already one of the world's largest electronics manufacturers, entered the market in 1994 with the Sony PlayStation, one of the first home consoles to feature 3D graphics, almost immediately establishing itself as a major publisher in the space. Shigeru Miyamoto remains internationally renowned as a "father of videogaming" and is the only game developer so far to receive Japan's highest civilian honor for artists, the 文化功労者 (bunka kōrōsha) or Person of Cultural Merit.

Arcade culture is a major influence among young Japanese, with Akihabara Electric Town being a major nexus of so-called otaku culture in Japan, which overlaps with videogaming heavily. Japanese video game franchises such as '' Super Smash Bros.'', ''Pokémon'', '' Super Mario'', ''The Legend of Zelda'', ''Animal Crossing'', '' Shin Megami Tensei: Persona'', ''Resident Evil'', ''Dark Souls'' and ''Monster Hunter'' have gained critical acclaim and continue to garner a large international following. The Japanese role-playing game is a major game genre innovated by Japan and remains popular both domestically and internationally, with titles like ''Final Fantasy'' and '' Dragon Quest'' selling millions. The country has an estimated 67.6 million players in 2018.

History

Background

In 1966, Sega introduced an electro-mechanical game called ''Periscope'' - a submarine simulator which used lights and plastic waves to simulate sinking ships from a submarine. It became an instant success in Japan, Europe, and North America, where it was the first arcade game to cost a quarter per play, Steven L. Kent (2000), ''The First Quarter: A 25-Year History of Video Games'', p. 83, BWD Press, which would remain the standard price for arcade games for many years to come.Mark J. P. Wolf (2008)
''The video game explosion: a history from PONG to PlayStation and beyond''
p. 149, ABC-CLIO,

Sega later produced gun games that used rear image projection in a manner similar to the ancient zoetrope to produce moving animations on a screen. The first of these, the light-gun game ''Duck Hunt'', appeared in 1969; it featured animated moving targets on a screen, printed out the player's score on a ticket, and had volume-controllable sound-effects. Another Sega 1969 release, ''Missile'', a shooter, featured electronic sound and a moving film strip to represent the targets on a projection screen.

1970s to early 1980s

The first arcade video game, Atari, Inc.'s ''Pong'', debuted in the United States in 1972, and led to a number of new American manufacturers to create their own arcade games to capitalize on the rising fad. Several of these companies had Japanese partners and kept their overseas counterparts abreast of this new technology, leading several Japanese coin-operated electronic games makers to step into the arcade game market as well. Taito and Namco were some of the early adopters of arcade games in Japan, first distributing American games before developing their own. Nintendo which at this time was primarily manufacturing traditional and electronic toys, also entered the arcade game market in the latter part of the 1970s.

As in the United States, many of the early Japanese arcade games were based on the principle of cloning gameplay established by popular titles to make new ones. However, several new concepts came out of these Japanese-developed games, and performed well in both Japan and in re-licensed versions in the United States, such as Taito's ''Speed Race'' and ''Gun Fight'' in 1975. ''Gun Fight'' notably, when released by Midway Games in the U.S., was the first arcade game to use a microprocessor rather than discrete electronic components. Sega's black and white boxing game ''Heavyweight Champ'' was released in 1976 as the first video game to feature fist fighting. The first stealth games were Hiroshi Suzuki's ''Manbiki Shounen'' (1979) and ''Manbiki Shoujo'' (1980), Taito's ''Lupin III'' (1980), and Sega's '' 005'' (1981).

Separately, the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, had been released in the U.S. in 1971, of which Nintendo had partnered to manufacture the light gun accessory for the console, while Atari began releasing home console versions of ''Pong'' in 1975. Japan's first home video game console was Epoch's TV Tennis Electrotennis. It was followed by the first successful Japanese console, Nintendo's Color TV Game, in 1977 which was made in partnership with Mitsubishi Electronics. Numerous other dedicated home consoles were made mostly by television manufacturers, leading these systems to be called ''TV geemu'' or ''terebi geemu'' in Japan.

Eventually, the 1978 arcade release of ''Space Invaders'' would mark the first major mainstream breakthrough for video games in Japan.Martin Picard
The Foundation of Geemu: A Brief History of Early Japanese video games
''International Journal of Computer Game Research'', 2013 Created by Nishikado at Japan's Taito, ''Space Invaders'' pitted the player against multiple enemies descending from the top of the screen at a constantly increasing speed.Buchanan, Levi
Space Invaders
, IGN, March 31, 2003. Accessed June 14, 2008 The game used alien creatures inspired by ''The War of the Worlds'' (by H. G. Wells

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