Hudson Soft (1990)

Hudson Soft (1990)





Hudson Soft was truly one of the great video game companies. It's origins started with personal computer byproducts all the way back in the mid 1970s but most game players would probably know them for their Nintendo games or perhaps one of the most underrated video game consoles of all time, the TurboGrafx-16 (or PC-Engine as it was known outside of North America). To be fair, it was a huge success in Japan, it's just that it was rather underrated in the U.S. The ad above is from the first issue of SWAT Pro from the Fall of 1990. The TurboGrafx-16 had been released relatively recently but clearly Hudson Soft's catalog of games for the NES was still hugely important as this ad features a whole bunch of them. I've played some of these but there are a couple I always really wanted to play based on their ads but still haven't. Milon's Secret Castle and Medel Palace come to mind. In addition to those systems, Hudson Soft developed games for many other systems over the years including the Super Nintendo, Game Boy, Nintendo 64, Xbox 360, etc. Some of these were developed for other publishers. For instance, Hudson Soft was responsible for the development of Mario Party 1-8 (and 9 was developed primarily by former Hudson Soft employees). Hudson Soft was bought out by Konami in 2012 so Hudson Soft does not exist any more. Konami has the rights to Hudson Soft's back catalog but unfortunately haven't done a whole lot with it besides some Virtual Console releases.