WArc 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.
WBanpresto Co., Ltd. was a Japanese toy company, and a former game developer and publisher, headquartered in the Shinagawa Seaside West Building in Shinagawa, Tokyo. The current iteration of the company was formed on April 1, 2008, with the focus on the toy consumer business. The company was dissolved in February 2019 and combined to Bandai Spirits, with the company getting all the rights and duties of Banpresto.
WCAVE Interactive Co., Ltd. is a Japanese video game company founded in 1994 by former employees of Toaplan following its bankruptcy. They are known primarily for their "bullet hell" shoot 'em ups; from 1995 up to 2013, CAVE was one of the most prolific shoot 'em up developers in the Japanese market. Alongside this, CAVE has produced a variety of other types games for arcades, home consoles, PCs, and smartphones, also dating back to 1995.
WCircus is a Japanese visual novel studio known for creating adult-oriented bishōjo games. In addition to the normal Circus brand name, there are other brand divisions including Circus Northern, Circus Fetish, Circus Metal, and Sanctuary. Circus has also been involved in collaboration projects, creating titles such as True Tears, a collaboration with Broccoli, GameCrab, and illustrator Rei Izumi published under the brand La'cryma, and Sora o Tobu, Mittsu no Hōhō., an adult-oriented collaboration with Broccoli released under the same brand name.
WEighting Co., Ltd., stylized as 8ing, is a Japanese video game developer and publisher. It was formerly known as Raizing. It is known for its shoot 'em ups and its licensed fighting games.
WEntertainment Software Publishing, Inc. (ESP) was a Japanese video game publisher headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo. It was founded in 1997 as a publisher for games developed by the Game Developers Network (GD-NET). GD-NET, which included companies such as Treasure and Game Arts, was established due to concerns over smaller developers not having the same financial backing like larger game companies did, as production of console games was beginning to rise. ESP was best known for publishing shoot 'em ups and role-playing games. While primarily a publisher, ESP also developed a handful of games internally.
WExamu, formerly known as Yuki Enterprise, was a Japanese video game company founded in 2000. It mostly produced fighting games for arcades and home consoles. It is known for owning Team Arcana, the developer of the original intellectual property series Arcana Heart. Initially, they developed games for their own arcade system board called eX-Board, to release their games mostly on Taito's NESiCAxLive arcade delivery system. Support for eX-Board ceased in December, 2013. At the end of February 2020, Examu suspended their business operations. Any ongoing development works and product supports has since migrated to Team Arcana.
WInterchannel, Inc. was a Japanese video game developer and publisher.
WIrem Software Engineering is a Japanese video game console developer and publisher, and formerly a developer and manufacturer of arcade games as well. The company has its headquarters in Chiyoda, Tokyo.
WiXIT Corporation , formerly known as Index Corporation , is a Japanese corporate information and communications technology company owned by Sawada Holdings.
WKey is a Japanese visual novel studio known for making dramatic and plot-oriented titles. It was formed on July 21, 1998, as a brand under the publisher Visual Arts, and is located in Kita, Osaka.
WKID was a Japan-based company specializing in porting and developing bishōjo games.
WKojima Productions Co., Ltd. is a Japanese video game development studio founded in 2005 by video game designer Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear series. It was established as a subsidiary of Konami. The studio had around 100 employees, but grew to over 200 for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. After leaving Konami and ending the contract, Kojima reformed the company as an independent studio in Shinagawa.
WKonami Holdings Corporation is a Japanese entertainment conglomerate and video game company. In addition to being a video game developer and publisher, it also produces and distributes trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, pachinko machines, slot machines, and arcade cabinets. Konami has casinos around the world and operates health and physical fitness clubs across Japan.
WNamco Limited, simply known as Namco, was a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company, headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo. It held several international branches, including Namco America in Santa Clara, California, Namco Europe in London, Namco Taiwan in Kaohsiung, and Shanghai Namco in mainland China.
WNewGin Co. Ltd. is a privately owned Japanese manufacturer of pachinko and pachislot machines incorporated in May 1968 in Nagoya, Japan. The company slogan is "Serious Play" .
WNintendo Co., Ltd. is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles.
WNippon Ichi Software, Inc. is a Japanese video game developer and publisher. The company has developed a number of traditional role-playing video games, but their latest releases have primarily been tactical RPG games. They have made games such as the Disgaea and Marl Kingdom tactical role-playing series, as well as La Pucelle: Tactics, Phantom Brave, Makai Kingdom: Chronicles of the Sacred Tome, and Soul Nomad & the World Eaters. The company has also published anime. Its corporate mascot is the Disgaea character Prinny.
WPalette is a Japanese visual novel studio founded in 2002. It is an adult game brand under Clearrave , a software company located in Mitaka, Tokyo. Palette is known for developing Mashiroiro Symphony, their ninth title released in 2009. It was ported to the PlayStation Portable and was adapted into an anime television series in 2011.
WPaon DP Co., Ltd. (株式会社パオン・ディーピー) is a Japanese video game developer. The company was founded in August 2004 as DP Inc. and merged with Paon Corporation, Ltd. in March 2015 to form Paon DP Inc.
WPlatinumGames Inc. is a Japanese video game developer that was founded in October 2007 as result of a merger between two companies, Seeds Inc. and Odd Inc. Shinji Mikami, Atsushi Inaba, and Hideki Kamiya founded Seeds Inc. after the closure of Capcom's Clover Studio, while Odd Inc. was founded by Tatsuya Minami. A year after the studio was founded, video game publisher Sega announced that it would be publishing four unique properties developed by the company: MadWorld, Infinite Space, Bayonetta, and Vanquish. Their partnership later extended to include Anarchy Reigns. Most of these games were met with positive reception. Over the years, PlatinumGames had developed an expertise in action games and one of their key philosophies was that the team would not follow conventional game design concepts.
WPsikyo was a Japanese video game developer and publisher known for its shoot 'em ups and undressing mahjong games. It was founded in 1992 by former Video System staff who worked on the Aero Fighters series. Psikyo was mainly an arcade game developer, and ported some of their games to home consoles as well.
WRegista is a Japanese visual novel publishing company founded by Takumi Nakazawa. The company name comes from an Italian word meaning film director, control tower, producer, and game maker. The company mainly ports adult game to the consumer port PlayStation 2. In 2006, Regista published their first original game named I/O by GN Software, and in 2007 published their second original game called Myself ; Yourself by Yeti.
WSeibu Kaihatsu Inc. was a Japanese manufacturer of arcade games. The company was founded in 1982 at Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan as Seibu Denshi Inc. (有限会社セイブ電子), but changed to its current name sometime in 1984. It is currently owned by Hitoshi Hamada.
WSNK Corporation is a Japanese video game hardware and software company. It is the successor to the company Shin Nihon Kikaku and presently owns the SNK video game brand and the Neo Geo video game platform. SNK's predecessor Shin Nihon Kikaku was founded in 1978 by Eikichi Kawasaki. The corporation was initially named Shin Nihon Kikaku . In 1981, the name was informally shortened to SNK Corporation, which became the company's official name in 1986.
WStudio e.go! was a Japanese eroge company which used to produce fantasy games of various genres for computers, including role-playing video games, SRPGs, and visual novels. The cutscenes of these games were illustrated by Kazue Yamamoto.
WSuzak Inc. was a Japanese video game developer based in Tokyo, Japan. Suzak worked with Nintendo to create games based on their intellectual property, such as Wario: Master of Disguise and F-Zero Climax. They created numerous games for PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS.
WTose Co., Ltd. is a Japanese video game development company based in Kyoto. It is mostly known for developing Nintendo's Game & Watch Gallery series, various Dragon Ball games, as well as other Nintendo products. Tose has developed or co-developed over 1,000 games since the company's inception in 1979, but is virtually never credited in the games themselves. "We're always behind the scenes," said Masa Agarida, Vice President of Tose's U.S. division. "Our policy is not to have a vision. Instead, we follow our customers' visions. Most of the time we refuse to put our name on the games, not even staff names." As such, Tose has gained a reputation for being a "ghost developer".
WTreasure Co., Ltd. is a Japanese video game developer based in Tokyo known for its action, platform, and shoot 'em up games. The company was founded in 1992 by former Konami employees seeking to explore original game concepts and free themselves from Konami's reliance on sequels. Their first game, Gunstar Heroes (1993) on the Sega Genesis, was a critical success and established a creative and action-oriented design style that would continue to characterize their output. Treasure's philosophy in game development has always been to make games they enjoy, not necessarily those that have the greatest commercial viability.
WType-Moon is a Japanese game company, best known for their visual novels, co-founded by author Kinoko Nasu and illustrator Takashi Takeuchi. It is also known under the name Notes Co., Ltd. for its publishing and corporate operations, as it is the company official name, while Type-Moon is a brand name as a homage to the original doujin group. After creating the popular visual novel Tsukihime as a doujin soft circle, Type-Moon has since incorporated and produced the also popular visual novel Fate/stay night. The latter has also been adapted into anime and manga series that have amassed a global fanbase.
WUniversal Entertainment Corporation, formerly known as Aruze Corporation and Universal, is a Japanese manufacturer of pachinko, slot machines, arcade games and other gaming products, and a publisher of video games. Aruze possesses licenses to both manufacture and distribute casino machines in the American states of Nevada, Mississippi and New Jersey. The company's corporate headquarters are in Tokyo. Aruze is also the licence holder of the video game franchise Shadow Hearts. Up until February 18, 2012, the company owned approximately 21% of Wynn Resorts. On November 1, 2009, Aruze Corporation changed its name to Universal Entertainment Corporation due to financial difficulties.
WVisual Arts , formerly Visual Artist Office , is a Japanese publishing company specializing in the publishing and distribution of visual novels for a large list of game developers. Visual Arts has developed the game engines their brands currently use, including the current engine, called Siglus, and older engines RealLive and AVG32. Visual Arts also handles the selling and distribution of these games. The games published are mostly for a male audience, though they also publish games targeted towards women as well. They are well known for the publishing of games by the studio Key such as the famous visual novels Kanon, Air, and Clannad.