Author Topic: The truth behind "Namco Corporation"  (Read 3814 times)

taizou

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The truth behind "Namco Corporation"
« on: July 17, 2016, 08:01:50 PM »
So for a long time, no one really knew what the "Namco Corporation" credited in Dian Shi Ma Li really was. There was speculation that it might have been Bit Corp using a fake name (as the game was obviously developed by the same people that made Bit's Jackpot and Sheng Hen Pao), but nothing was ever confirmed.

Until now!

A while back I'd done a little digging into "Fiver Firm", the publisher of the Game Boy Color game e'Fighter Hot (and not much else, that I knew of). I found a few Taiwanese trademark registrations for them, dating back as early as the mid-80s, but not much else. One was for the name "Namcot". Weird, but I didn't really know why they did it. Probably just some old pirate carts or Famiclone. And that's where I left it, for a while.

Until now! I just happened to come across my notes from back then, and googled their Chinese name, "五合企業有限公司". This turned up a page on boss.com.tw, a Taiwanese company directory which seems to hold basic info on just about every Taiwanese company, even those that are long gone. And that page gave their English name as "Namco Co., Ltd". Namco again! Weird!

At this point I was starting to think of that other unknown Namco. Fiver Firm had been around since the 80s, doing who knows what, so maybe this would make sense..

The final confirmation came via Google Books, which linked the same Chinese name to "..V Mary Bar" in a (tiny, badly OCR-d snippet of a) Taiwanese presidential office gazette.. surely not a coincidence? A bunch of digging later found a full copy of said gazette on the Taiwanese National Central Library website - which revealed the context for this was a copyright registration, to that same Chinese name, for everyone's favourite plumber-based slot machine game.

I wrote this article based on my findings here- http://bootleggames.wikia.com/wiki/Fiver_Firm

But knowing all this now opens up the greater mystery of just what the hell they were doing the rest of the time - they existed from at least 1985 (based on trademark registrations), but released one Famicom game in 1989, one Game Boy game in 2000 (ish) and nothing else? The only other thing I can find linked to them is a patent for some kind of cartridge converter. So either they had business interests outside of games, or they were doing a lot of underground/anonymous stuff.
« Last Edit: July 17, 2016, 08:02:53 PM by taizou »

msf007

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The truth behind "Namco Corporation"
« Reply #1 on: July 18, 2016, 06:52:21 AM »
Oh wow. I was always curious about the meaning of that "Fiver Firm" boot logo name since it sounded so strange(I saw it on your Neo Fuji blog), and now I see the answer with even more surprise.

"Fiver Firm" kinda makes sense as English name for 五合企業, but Namco! What were they thinking? So NTDEC was not the only case of bold Taiwanese company name...

fcgamer

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The truth behind "Namco Corporation"
« Reply #2 on: September 07, 2016, 08:15:59 AM »
Carrying on with the trademark infringement, I have a magazine that credits this game to an "American Nintendo" corp.

HummerTeam1001

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The truth behind "Namco Corporation"
« Reply #3 on: September 07, 2016, 08:39:25 AM »
LOL