Hudson Soft

Japan · Founded 1973 · Closed 2012 · 1973 – 2012

Hudson Soft created Bomberman and published Adventure Island, and was the first third-party developer to produce software for the Famicom — a technical achievement that opened Nintendo's platform to outside developers and changed the course of console gaming.

Hudson Soft was founded in Sapporo, Hokkaido, in 1973 by brothers Hiroshi and Yuji Kudo as a radio communications shop. The company transitioned to software development in the late 1970s when personal computers became commercially available in Japan, producing games and utilities for the PC-88 and other early Japanese platforms. Hudson was among the first Japanese software companies to publish for multiple platforms, developing both games and software tools — most notably the Hudson BASIC interpreter, which gave it revenue stability independent of the volatile game market. In 1984, Hudson became the first third-party developer to produce cartridge software for Nintendo's Famicom, after negotiating an arrangement with Nintendo that allowed it to manufacture licensed cartridges. This achievement was both a commercial opportunity and a technical challenge: producing Famicom-compatible hardware required reverse-engineering the cartridge interface, and Hudson's engineers managed it in time to release Lode Runner (1984) and Nuts & Milk (1984) — the first two third-party Famicom games. The arrangement Hudson negotiated became the template for all subsequent third-party Famicom licensing, meaning that Hudson effectively opened Nintendo's console to the third-party developer ecosystem that would define its library through the 1980s. Bomberman, introduced in 1983 on PC-88 and adapted for Famicom in 1985, became Hudson's most enduring franchise. The maze-based game in which players placed bombs to destroy obstacles and enemies was simple to understand but deep in its competitive multi-player dynamics, which became the series' primary identity through the Super Bomberman titles on SNES. The Bomberman series eventually spanned over 70 games and was still in production three decades after the original. Adventure Island (1986), a Famicom platformer based on a licensed Sega arcade game, spawned its own series of sequels and established Hudson as a reliable producer of competent action-platformers. Hudson's most significant business development of the 1980s was its role in the creation of the PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16 in North America), a joint hardware project with NEC that produced the most technically capable 8/16-bit hybrid console of 1987. The PC Engine used a Hudson-designed custom graphics chip that could display 512 colours simultaneously — more than any competitor — and processed sprites with hardware that outperformed the Famicom in most meaningful metrics. The platform never achieved Famicom sales levels in Japan and performed modestly in North America, but it hosted a strong software library and introduced the CD-ROM as a console storage medium in 1988, two years before any other platform. Hudson was acquired by Konami in 2012 and the Hudson brand was dissolved; the company's development staff were absorbed into Konami's internal operations. The Bomberman franchise continued under Konami's management. Hudson's legacy is primarily its historical role as the company that opened the Famicom to third-party development, an achievement whose downstream effects — the NES library, the console third-party ecosystem, the platform-holder licensing model — shaped the next forty years of game publishing.