Nihon Bussan

Company's logo is drawn Lotus 102D

The company's founder Sueharu Torii (鳥井 末治) (1947 –) established Nihon Bussan in October 1970 in Kita-ku, Osaka. They begin their activities by mainly selling arcade machines. In 1972, the company was incorporated as Nihon Bussan Co., Ltd with a concluded capital of 3 million yen.[5]

In 1976, Nihon Bussan made its debut as a manufacturer to the Amusement Machine Show and opened a Tokyo office in 1978.[5] 1978 also saw Nihon Bussan entering the arcade game market, when they debuted with a copy of the game Breakout called Table Attacker.[6] The same year, Nihon Bussan settled with Taito by paying a license fee to launch a copy of Space Invaders titled Moon Base.[7] Also in 1979, a business alliance was formed with Namco for a clone of Galaxian by the name of Moon Alien. However, Nihon Bussan violated the manufacturing agreement by exceeding production of Moon Alien and ended up paying Namco the excess of the license fee.[8] Nihon Bussan continued to release successful titles such as the 1980 original works Moon Cresta and Crazy Climber.[9] The same year, the company issued brochures that listed both Moon Base and Moon Alien as original works of Nihon Bussan.[10]

In 1983, the company developed Jangou Night which features the industry's first undressing elements and established the genre of strip mahjong games.[11] In 1984, Nihon Bussan developed Tube Panic, the industry's first board game equipped with a rotation feature.[12] From the mid-1980s, Nihon Bussan released Terra Cresta and Cosmo Police Galivan that made use of Yamaha YM3812 FM sound.[13]

Nihon Bussan entered the home video game market in 1983 by developing in-house the game machine My Vision, and moved in 1986 to the NES market of Nintendo with the release of MagMax. Sales and production of software for the MSX would follow in 1988. At first, porting work from arcade games was the center of the lineup. But later in 1990, Nihon Bussan released original works for the PC Engine such as F1 Circus and F1 which became hits. During the height of the F1 Circus series, Nihon Bussan sponsored Team Lotus over a period from 1992 to 1993. The front wing end plate of Lotus 107 and Lotus 107B of the year of the machine had the company's logo sticker of Nihon Bussan.

Nihon Bussan started the production & sales of products for the Mega Drive in 1991, SNES in 1992, Sony PlayStation in 1995 and for the Sega Saturn in 1996.

As with the arcades, several of Nihon Bussan's titles and themes released for the household were Mahjong games. Nihon Bussan's PC Engine game Sexy Idol Mahjong incorporated undressing elements and used the first "18 years of age or older recommended" software in the home market.

In March 2009, the company partnered with D4 Enterprise to reprint and distributed Nihon Bussan retro games for its Project EGG service.[14]

In March 2014, Nihon Bussan sold the rights of all video games to Hamster Corporation.[15] Hamster had approached founder Sueharu Torii for a licensing agreement of Nihon Bussan's games. Torii opted instead to sell outright the company's video game library and to retire.

• Official website (in Japanese) (archives)
• Nihon Bussan at MobyGames