page_title: Namco
section_title: Origins (1955–1972)
hierarchical_section_title: Namco / History / Origins (1955–1972)
caption_attribution_description: English: A photograph of the rocking horses installed by Masaya Nakamura in the roof garden of a Japanese department store.
context_page_description: Namco Ltd. was a Japanese developer and publisher of arcade and home console video games, originally headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo. Several international divisions were established, including Namco America in Santa Clara, California, Shanghai Namco in mainland China, and Namco Enterprises Asia in Hong Kong.
  Namco was founded by Masaya Nakamura as Nakamura Seisakusho on June 1, 1955, beginning as a producer of coin-operated amusement rides for Japanese department store roof gardens, seeing success with making children's rides for the Mitsukoshi chain. Renamed Nakamura Manufacturing in 1959, the company purchased the struggling Japanese division of Atari from Nolan Bushnell in 1974 and began releasing their games in Japan, where they quickly became one of the leading game companies in Asia. The acquisition inspired Namco to produce their own video games in-house, beginning with Gee Bee in 1978. Namco released their first major hit Galaxian a year later, followed by Pac-Man in 1980 — the latter has since become the most successful arcade game of all time and one of the highest-grossing video games of all time.
context_section_description: On June 1, 1955, Japanese businessman Masaya Nakamura founded Nakamura Seisakusho in Tokyo. Nakamura used US$3,000 to purchase two mechanical rocking horse rides and install them in the roof garden of a Yokohama department store. Each day Nakamura cleaned up and repaired the rides if needed, and greeted the mothers of the children that visited. Nakamura also created a "goldfish scooping" game for the same store, however the fish were killed during a typhoon. Nakamura Seisakusho was renamed to Nakamura Manufacturing Company in 1959, and a few years later in the early 1960s Nakamura made a deal with the Mitsukoshi chain to install a children's ride atop their store in Nihonbashi, Tokyo. The ride, named the "Roadaway Race", was a moving mechanical train that proved to be very popular among children, leading Mitsukoshi to request that Nakamura and his company install similar rides for all their stores.
  With business doing well, Nakamura Manufacturing began constructing different types of mechanical games. One such game was Periscope in 1965, which Nakamura claimed to be the first he designed himself. A new manufacturing plant was opened up in 1966 so that the company could construct their own mechanical rides; the same year, Nakamura struck a deal with Walt Disney Productions to produce children's rides using the likenesses of their characters. In 1971, Nakamura Manufacturing began releasing games under the name "Namco", an acronym of their name, and began production of several coin-operated electro-mechanical arcade games, such as Racer in 1970 and Formula-X in 1972. Nakamura Manufacturing also created a robotics division, led by Shigeki Toyama, that produced robots for use in entertainment centers and other locations.
caption: Two mechanical rocking horses installed by Nakamura Seisakusho in 1955.
exif: {}