Today is a sad day for Namco, the gaming company that brought brilliant arcade hits such as Pacman, Galaga and Time Crisis to gamers across the world – Masaya Nakamura, one of the founders of Namco has passed away.
In 1955, Masaya Nakamura established Nakamura Manufacturing, an amusement ride company that turned into Nakamura Amusement Machine Manufacturing Company or “Namco.” The company later merged with Bandai in 2005.
During the decades after WWII, roofs of department stores use to flourish with carnival-style activities and analog arcade machines – Namco began creating these machines.
In the late 1970s and early 80s, Nakamura’s business took off with arcade hits like Galaxian, Galaga, Pole Position, and Xevious. But in the end the game that propelled the business to another was Pacman, it wasn’t only the biggest Namco hit of that era, but also of the most important Japanese video games ever made.
According to the official Namco Bandai release, Nakamura passed away on January 22. The news of his death, however, was made public today.
