23 Video game companies established in 1988

Arc System Works Co., Ltd. , commonly referred to as ArcSys, is a Japanese video game developer and publisher located in Yokohama. Founded by Minoru Kidooka in 1988, the company is known for arcade 2D fighting game franchises, including Guilty Gear and BlazBlue, as well as other license-based fighting games for Dragon Ball, Persona 4 and others.

Attention to Detail Ltd (ATD) was a British video game developer based in Hatton. Founded by University of Birmingham graduates in September 1988, it was acquired by Kaboom Studios in January 1997. The studio shut down in August 2003 due to financial issues at Kaboom Studios. The studio is known for developing the Rollcage series.

Bit Managers, formerly known as New Frontier, was a video game developer based in Barcelona (Spain). It was co-founded by Alberto Jose González, who composed the music for all of their games.

Bizarre Creations Limited was a British video game development studio based in Liverpool, best known for their racing titles Metropolis Street Racer (Dreamcast) and the follow-up Project Gotham Racing series. The company has also developed games in other genres, including the Geometry Wars arcade series, plus the third-person shooters Fur Fighters and The Club. Bizarre Creations was acquired by publisher Activision in 2007, and subsequently completed its racer Blur in May 2010.

Core Design Limited was a British video game developer based in Derby. Founded in May 1988 by former Gremlin Graphics employees, it originally bore the name Megabrite until rebranding as Core Design in October the same year. The company was acquired by umbrella company CentreGold in December 1994, which in turn was acquired by Eidos Interactive in April 1996. In May 2006, the Core Design personnel and assets were acquired by Rebellion Developments, and the company became Rebellion Derby, which was then shut down in March 2010.

Delphine Software International was a French video game developer. They were famous for publishing Another World and creating the cinematic platform game Flashback, which bore a similarity to Prince of Persia, both in gameplay and in its use of rotoscoped animation. They were also known for their Moto Racer series.

Disney Interactive Studios, Inc. was an American video game developer and publisher owned by The Walt Disney Company through Disney Interactive. Prior to its closure in 2016, it developed and distributed multi-platform video games and interactive entertainment worldwide.

The Dreamers Guild was a publisher and developer of video games that operated from 1988 until 1997.

ELF Corporation , stylized as élf, was a Japanese eroge studio. One of its most popular games is Dōkyūsei, a pioneering dating sim, which has had a sequel and been turned into adult OVA series. The character design of the main villains from the -saku series is the company mascot. They are also known for role-playing video games such as the Dragon Knight series and visual novel adventure games such as YU-NO. Many ELF games had been turned into adult OVA series. Three of ELF game series had even been turned into TV anime series: Elf-ban Kakyūsei, Raimuiro Senkitan and YU-NO.

Eurocom was a British video game developer founded in October 1988 by Mat Sneap, Chris Shrigley, Hugh Binns, Tim Rogers and Neil Baldwin, to specifically develop games for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Eurocom expanded to several other platforms, including handheld game systems and most major video game consoles. The company was known for its arcade to console ports and games based on licensed properties. They also developed a few original properties, such as Magician, Machine Hunter, 40 Winks, and Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy.

Intelligent Games Ltd was a British video game developer based in London. The company was established in 1988 as The Intelligent Games Co. by Matthew Stibbe, who was studying at Pembroke College in Oxford. Following his graduation and the releases of 'Nam 1965–1975 and Imperium, Stibbe relocated to London in 1992, where he incorporated Intelligent Games in 1993. He hired Imperium producer Kevin Shrapnell as director of development, who aimed for the company to develop "hit-driven, brand-led" games, among them a series of PGA Tour games and a tie-in to the film Waterworld. The latter attracted Westwood Studios, which worked with Intelligent Games on Dune 2000 and expansions for Command & Conquer: Red Alert. Relocating multiple times within London, Intelligent Games grew to 65 employees by 1999. That year, Westwood was unsuccessful in acquiring Intelligent Games but inspired Stibbe to want to leave the company. He sold it to Shrapnell, Cuss, and Neil Jones in June 2000 and departed that same year. Intelligent Games continued producing games, eventually eyeing the mobile and console markets, until running out of money in 2002. The company closed and all assets were liquidated in December 2002.

KID

KID was a Japan-based company specializing in porting and developing bishōjo games.

Mythos Games was a British video game developer company founded by Julian Gollop with his brother Nick in 1988 as Target Games. It is best known for its 1994 strategy game X-COM: UFO Defense. Following the closing of Mythos Games in 2001, Gollop founded Codo Technologies.

Quest Corporation was a Japanese video game company founded in 1988. Quest is best known for its critically acclaimed tactical role-playing game series Ogre Battle.

Bink Video is a proprietary file format for video developed by RAD Game Tools.

Rockstar Games Toronto ULC is a Canadian video game developer and a studio of Rockstar Games based in Oakville, Ontario. The company was established as Imagexcel in the early 1980s. The company developed several games under that name, including Quarantine, published by GameTek in 1994. The publisher, through its Alternative Reality Technologies subsidiary, bought Imagexcel's assets in March 1995. GameTek then sold Alternative Reality Technologies to Take-Two Interactive in July 1997, where it became part of Take-Two's Rockstar Games label in 1999 as Rockstar Canada. In August 2002, the company was renamed Rockstar Toronto to avoid confusion with the newly acquired Rockstar Vancouver. As Rockstar Toronto, the studio has worked on several ports of Rockstar Games releases, as well as the 2005 game The Warriors, based on the 1979 film of the same name, and Max Payne 3 in 2011. Following the release of Max Payne 3, Rockstar Vancouver was merged into Rockstar Toronto, with the resulting company moving into new, bigger offices.

SCi Entertainment Group plc was a British video game publisher based in London. The company was founded in 1988 by Jane Cavanagh and floated on the stock exchange in 1996. In May 2005, SCi acquired Eidos, the parent company of publisher Eidos Interactive, and merged their operations by June 2006. In December 2008, SCi was briefly renamed Eidos and was subsequently taken over by Square Enix in March 2009.

Simtex was a video game developer established by Steve Barcia in 1988. It created a number of turn-based strategy games for the PC, most notably the first two Master of Orion games. The company closed in 1997.

Stormfront Studios, Inc. was an American video game developer based in San Rafael, California. In 2007, the company had over 50 developers working on two teams, and owned all its proprietary engines, tools, and technology. As of the end of 2007, over fourteen million copies of Stormfront-developed games had been sold. Stormfront closed on March 31, 2008, due to the closure of their publisher at the time, Sierra Entertainment.

Strategy First Inc. is a Canadian video game publisher based in Montreal. Founded in 1988 by Don McFatridge, Steve Wall and Dave Hill, the company filed for bankruptcy in 2004 and was subsequently acquired by Silverstar Holdings in 2005. Initially specializing in developing strategy video games, it since switched to primarily publishing, releasing games like the Disciples series, the Jagged Alliance series, O.R.B: Off-World Resource Base, and the Space Empires series.

Visual Concepts Entertainment is an American video game developer based in Novato, California. Founded in May 1988, the company is best known for developing sports games in the 2K franchise, primarily NBA 2K and WWE 2K. Visual Concepts was acquired by Sega in May 1999 and sold to Take-Two Interactive in January 2005. The acquisition of the company led Take-Two Interactive to open their 2K label which Visual Concepts became part of, on the day following the acquisition.

Wisdom Tree, Inc. is an American developer of Christian video games. Originally founded in 1988 as Color Dreams, one of the first companies to work around Nintendo's lockout chip technology for the Nintendo Entertainment System, the company changed its focus to Christian games in 1990, changing its name to Wisdom Tree the following year.