Masaya Nakamura
industry leader
Class of 2010 Inductee
Masaya Nakamura was a Japanese businessman and the founder of Namco.
Nakamura founded his company on June 1, 1955, “Nakamura Seisakusho, Ltd.”
By the early 1970s, Nakamura and his company had shifted away from mechanical amusement rides to coin-operated arcade games.
Atari Japan was closed in 1974 and put up for auction. Nakamura saw this as the perfect opportunity to get into the video game market and purchased it for $500,000.
Nakamura’s company was renamed to Namco in 1977, an acronym of their older name.
Impressed by the success of the Atari Japan acquisition, Nakamura was interested in his company creating his own arcade games in-house.
Because of his vision in developing arcade games, Nakamura is often considered “the father of Pac-Man”, and credited as one of the instrumental people behind Japan’s video game industry.
According to RePlay magazine, many considered Nakamura to be “the single most important person in coin-op” by 1990. Nakamura had also pushed Namco to be one of the first third-party developers for the Nintendo Family Computer, which was soaring in popularity.
In 1985, Warner Communications split Atari into two companies and sold off each of their shares. Nakamura was given 60% of the shares for Atari Games, the arcade division, and gave Nakamura the right to distribute its games in Japan.
Nakamura stepped down as CEO of Namco in 2002, taking on a ceremonial role in the company’s management. In 2005, Namco merged with Bandai to form Bandai Namco Holdings, Japan’s third-largest video game developer by revenue and the seventh in the world. Nakamura retained an honorary position in its video game division Namco Bandai Games, now known as Bandai Namco Entertainment.
Wikipedia Link:
63 credits on 46 games on Mobygames:
https://www.mobygames.com/person/41376/masaya-nakamura/credits/
Accolades:
Nakamura is credited as a pioneer in the video game industry for his accomplishments, and one of the most important figures in video game history.
In 2007, he was awarded the “Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette” by the Japanese government for his contributions to video games.