Artoon Co., Ltd. (株式会社アートゥーン Kabushiki-Gaisha Ātūn) was a Japanese

video game developer A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large ...

established in 1999. It became a subsidiary of

AQ Interactive AQ Interactive, Inc. was a Japanese video game developer and publisher. AQ stands for Artistic Quality. It was the parent company of the developers Artoon, Cavia and feelplus, and most recently the U.S. publisher Xseed Games. AQ Interactive ...

in May 2004 and became a wholly owned subsidiary in June 2005. The team was primarily affiliated in the United States with

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. The brand consists of five video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming services, an online service by the name of Xbox network, and the development arm by the ...

and

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generati ...

projects, although they had also worked with

Hudson Soft was a Japanese video game company that released numerous games for video game consoles, home computers and mobile phones, mainly from the 1980s to the 2000s. It was headquartered in the Midtown Tower in Tokyo Midtown, Akasaka, Minato, T ...

and

Nintendo is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produced handmade playing cards ...

on other platforms. Key Artoon personnel include

Yoji Ishii previously known as is a video game development team within the Japanese multinational video game developer Sega. Yu Suzuki, who had previously developed arcade games for Sega including ''Hang-On'' and ''Out Run'', was the first manager of th ...

, Manabu Kusunoki, Hidetoshi Takeshita, Yutaka Sugano, Masamichi Harada, Takuya Matsumoto and

Naoto Ohshima (born February 26, 1964) is a Japanese artist and video game designer, best known for designing Sonic the Hedgehog and Dr. Eggman characters from Sega's ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' franchise. Although Yuji Naka created the original tech demo around wh ...

. When the company formed, it drew personnel and talent from several of

Sega is a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, respectively. Its division ...

's development teams, particularly those which worked on ''

Sonic the Hedgehog is a Japanese video game series and media franchise created by Sega. The franchise follows Sonic, an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog who battles the evil Doctor Eggman, a mad scientist. The main ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' games are platformers m ...

'' (created by Ōshima), and ''

Panzer Dragoon ''Panzer Dragoon'' is a series of video games by Sega. The first three games were developed in the 1990s by Sega's Team Andromeda for the Sega Saturn. The fourth, ''Panzer Dragoon Orta'' (2002), was developed by Sega's Smilebit team for the ...

''. The developer had approximately 85 employees. The company's focus was to create original game content for various consoles. Artoon became defunct when the parent company, AQ Interactive, filed for bankruptcy. Artoon was situated in

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...

Kanagawa prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-densest at . Its geographic area of makes it fifth-smallest. Kanag ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

. A secondary studio was maintained in Naha,

Okinawa is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan. Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan, has a population of 1,457,162 (as of 2 February 2020) and a geographic area of 2,281 Square kilometre, km2 (880 sq mi). ...

prefecture, Japan. Artoon, along with feelplus and Cavia, were all absorbed into parent company

Games developed

References

{{Artoon Defunct video game companies of Japan Video game companies established in 1999 Video game companies disestablished in 2010 Video game development companies Japanese companies established in 1999 Japanese companies disestablished in 2010 AQ Interactive