The name of the company is a portmanteau, which came from the early days of the company, where the company strives to produce independent video games with a low budget and minimal connections to other developers which is described as "almost zero". From an interview with Famitsu, another candidate for the company name came from one of the fictitious game companies appearing in "Game Center CX Arino's Challenge". The philosophy of the company is to make games that are easy to understand and user-friendly. At the start, the company specialized in creating games for handheld systems, but eventually expanded to making mobile games. The company is also involved in making licensed trading-card games for popular franchises such as Legend of Mana and Final Fantasy. In an interview with a local university, the founder Masanobu Suzui commented that the company plans to "make new products that has never been created before". He regards the company as a game developer that "cherishes a creative viewpoint rather than state-of-the-art technology capabilities" and makes games that can be immersed by a long-time video game player but also aimed at what everyone can easily play.
History
In 1997, Masunobu Suzui founded the company at 24 years old, along with two members from the fresh graduate discovery project "Nintendo & Dentsu Game Seminar". They were initially tasked with developing programs for Nintendo's Satellaview peripheral for the Super Famicom. Some of the projects they worked on included "Sutto Hankoku" and "Cooking Pong!". The company went to develop many titles for the Nintendo DS such as Electroplankton. Shaberu! DS Oryōri Navi released by Nintendo in July 2006 won the 10th Media Arts Festival Entertainment Division Excellence Award. ' was released from Sega in November which became a million seller and awarded a special prize in the annual work section of the Japan Game Award 2007. In June 2011, the company released DualPenSports as their first title for the Nintendo 3DS. The company then collaborated with Square Enix on Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, in which Masunobu Suzui reunited with former Bandai producer Ikuro Kuroku when working on the game. The game went on to have an iOS and Arcade port, as well as two independent sequels titled ' and Theatrhythm Dragon Quest. The company then collaborated with Nintendo EAD for the development of NES Remix for both the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii U. During the planning phase, Koichi Hayashida, the Director of Nintendo Tokyo Production Department who participated in the "Nintendo & Dentsu Game Seminar" in his student days together with Masunobu Suzui, called up Suzui to partner up on the game development. Suzui then came to Hayashida with a game prototype, which Hayashida approved and green-lighted on the spot. This was around the time when development of the "Nintendo 3DS Guide Louvre Museum" was just completed, therefore the company was able to commit to the project. The game was well-reviewed and two sequels in the form on NES Remix 2 and Ultimate NES Remix was developed. The company first mobile title was Grand Marche no Meikyuu, released in September 2016. The game was developed in collaboration with Square Enix, after development of Theatrhythm Dragon Quest was wrapped up. However, Square Enix announced the game servers closure in November 2017. During Nintendo's E3 Presentation in 2017, the company was revealed to be co-developing , a strategic action-RPG-puzzle game for the Nintendo 3DS with Nintendo. A port of the game for the Nintendo Switch, to be released on the same day as the 3DS version, was revealed in a Nintendo Direct in March 2018, making this the first title the company developed for the Nintendo Switch.
