Bandai Namco Entertainment

Bandai Namco Entertainment A merger that brought toys and video games together. Founded: July 5, 1950 (Bandai) June 1, 1955 (Namco) September 29, 2005 (Bandai Namco) Founder(s): Masaya Nakamura Headquarters: Shinagawa, Tokyo, Japan Key people: Shukuo Ishikawa (Chairman) Mitsuaki Taguchi (President) Parent: Bandai Namco Holdings Subsidiaries: Bandai Namco Studios Bandai Namco Online Bandai Namco Network Services B.B. Studio BXD, Inc. D3Publisher Vibe, Inc. Website: https://bandainamcoent.eu/

Bandai Namco Entertainment, Inc. (formerly known as Namco Bandai Games and Bandai Namco Games) is a Japanese multinational video game developer and publisher founded in 2005 by Masaya Nakamura through the merger of Bandai with Namco.

Bandai Namco produces several multi-million-selling video game franchises, including Pac-Man, Galaxian, Gundam, Tales, Tekken, Soulcalibur, Ace Combat and Taiko no Tatsujin. The company is the third largest video game publisher in Japan by revenue and the seventh in the world.

Pac-Man, one of the most iconic video game characters of all time, serves as the company's mascot.

Why They're Waka Waka

Bandai

1. Nice reputation on their video games published by them.
2. Their intellectual properties, such as Mobile Suit Gundam and Digimon, are famously awesome.
3. Has a great relationship with Namco, localizing their NES games to Western markets in the 1980s before they merged in 2005.
4. They began to create awesome video games in 1985.
5. Licenses many properties like Dragon Ball, Naruto and Godzilla.
6. Localizing Vectrex and Intellivision to the Japanese market.
7. Outstanding graphics for each era.
8. Good music for the respective video game generations.
9. It used to publish games in the United Kingdom, like Street Fighter II
10. Classical and decent gameplay for each game.
11. Had a partnership with the late Gunpei Yokoi of Nintendo, which gave birth to the Japan-exclusive WonderSwan.
12. They also make great toys including Tamagotchi, Ben 10 figures, SH Figuarts and Gundam and tons of toys based off anime series, like Naruto, One Piece and Dragon Ball.

Namco

1. Eight words. Expiration of Namco's Patent on Loading Screen Minigames.
2. Their intellectual properties, such as Pac-Man, Galaga, Xevious, Tekken, Ridge Racer, Time Crisis, Ace Combat, The iDOLM@STER, Point Blank, Wangan Midnight, and Taiko no Tatsujin, are famously awesome.
3. Huge classic arcade hits like Pac-Man, Galaxian/Galaga, Pole Position, Mappy, Xevious, Dig Dug, The Tower of Druaga, Wonder Momo, and Valkyrie.
4. From the golden age era, they started to port video arcade games or exclusively make video games for home consoles and computers, mostly PlayStation consoles.
5. Pac-Man, the titular hero of the greatest arcade game of all time, popularly became one of Namco's video game mascots.
6. Outstanding graphics for each era.
7. Good music for the respective video game generations.
8. They listened to their feedbacks and complaints from the fans, like the moment when, in the international version of Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 5 where people complained that the game itself was a rehash of Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 4, which Namco listens to their feedback and brought some of the content from vanilla Japanese Maximum Tune 5 into the International releases of Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 5DX.
9. Classical and decent gameplay for each game.
10. They stopped using the infamous Denuvo Anti-Tamper tool from Tales of Arise onwards and removed in Tekken 7, Soulcalibur VI and Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown.
11. The Banapassport Card revolutionized the usage of player cards in the arcades that were used to level up your character, store and customize your cars on-the-fly, etc.
12. In 2022, they distributed Elden Ring, an RPG developed by FromSoftware and George R. R. Martin (the creator of Game of Thrones), which was a huge critical and commercial success. It was Bandai Namco's best-selling game in years, with over 13 million copies sold in its first month.
13. For Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune games, they have released a companion mobile app called Wangan Navigator, in which you can use it to show off your recent sessions, scratch cards to get cosmetic items or even cars, and even, show off your cars in the most outlandish style by using stickers that you can get to customize your "license" photo.

Bad Qualities

Bandai

1. They tried to trademark the term 必殺技 ("finishing move").
2. They made in collaboration with Apple the infamous Apple Bandai Pippin console.
3. The company is infamous for its terrible handling on licensed games. In fact, most of their crappy games in the CGW are licensed games.
4. Even without doing licensed games, they still published some terrible games such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Countdown Vampires and Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade.

Namco

1. They think it's a good idea to throw their EULA into practically any game they publish, regardless of if it has any online play.
2. Frequently without prior notice, they remove games from App Store and Google Play no matter how well it was received.
3. Apart from Tekken and possibly Wangan Midnight and Pac-Man, they have stopped caring about their older, past games. Most notably enough, they have stopped caring about Ridge Racer and sought no interest in ever reviving it for the newer consoles. Worse yet, they have basically stopped listening to the community altogether.
   • While Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series seems to be an exception, for some reason physical copies of the game are unavailable in North America, even with people complaining at this decision. It seems that Namco caters to the Japanese market and refuse to release their game globally, making this a blatant, racist decision.
4. Both Namco and Bandai unfortunately believe that NFTs are a good idea, when they so clearly are not.
5. Their "new" logo is awful, thus deliberately ruining their own image.

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