Sunsoft

Sunsoft's logo since 1985.

Sunsoft (サンソフト [Sansofuto]) is the brand name used by the Sun Corporation, a Japanese video game developer and publisher.

The company was founded in 1971 as a manufacturer of electronic equipment under the name Sun Electronics Corporation. In 1978, the company created its first arcade cabinet. In 1985 they adopted the brand name Sunsoft for their games. In 1987 they created an American branch called Sun Corporation of America and possibly an internal programming company called Tokai Engineering. In 1993 they changed company names to Sun Corporation and Tokai Engineering developed their final game. Around 1996 Sun Corporation of America closed. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Sunsoft was known for creating a lot of really unique and creative games like Blaster Master and Mr. Gimmick, but in the 1990s the company started focusing on making games for movies and TV shows. Their games were usually still pretty good, but lacked the creativity of their original titles. By the late 1990s, they stopped creating games all together and merely published or produced games. Although the company still technically exists, they have been reduced to publishing semi-adult mahjong games for phones, which is quite depressing.

I have been playing Sunsoft games since the late 1980s with NES games like Spy Hunter and Blaster Master. One of the things I liked about Sunsoft games is they had a unique quality to their games. They used a custom audio driver for unique-sounding music, employed fantastic artists to make their graphics, and generally made pretty great games. It's a shame they stopped producing their own titles.