Hudson Soft
1973–2012 Japanese video game company / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Hudson Soft Co., Ltd.[lower-alpha 1] 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, with an additional office in the Hudson Building in Sapporo.[5]
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 Former headquarters at Midtown Tower, Tokyo | |
Native name | 株式会社ハドソン |
|---|---|
Romanized name | Kabushikigaisha Hadoson |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
| JASDAQ: 4822 | |
| Industry | Video games |
| Founded | May 18, 1973; 51 years ago (1973-05-18)[1] |
| Founders | Yuji Kudo Hiroshi Kudo |
| Defunct | March 1, 2012; 12 years ago (2012-03-01) |
| Fate | Absorbed by Konami Digital Entertainment[2] |
| Successor | Konami Digital Entertainment |
| Headquarters | Midtown Tower, Tokyo Midtown Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo |
Key people | Takahashi Meijin Shinichi Nakamoto Shigeki Fujiwara Akira Sakuma Kazuhiko Uehara (President 2011‒2012) |
| Products | List of Hudson Soft games TurboGrafx-16 TurboExpress PC-FX |
| Total equity |  ¥300 million (July 2011)[3] |
Number of employees | 421 (March 2011)[4] |
| Parent | Konami |
Hudson Soft was founded on May 18, 1973. Initially, it dealt with personal computer products, but later expanded to the development and publishing of video games, mobile content, video game peripherals and music recording. Primarily a video game publisher, it internally developed many of the video games it released while outsourcing others to external companies. It is known for series such as Bomberman, Adventure Island, Star Soldier, Bonk and Bloody Roar.[6] Hudson also developed video games released by other publishers such as the Mario Party series from Nintendo. The mascot of the company is a bee named Hachisuke.
Hudson Soft made the TurboGrafx-16 in association with NEC, to compete against Nintendo, Sega, and SNK, while continuing making games on other platforms, as a third-party developer.
Hudson Soft ceased to exist as a company on March 1, 2012, and merged with Konami Digital Entertainment, which was the surviving entity.[7] Konami owns the assets of Hudson and has since rereleased its video game back catalogue on different occasions.[8][9]