Founded 1994 · Japan · Founders: Takashi Nishiyama,Kazuma Kujo,Yoshihiko Kodo · First game: Neo Turf Masters (1996)
A small team of former Irem staff that made just two games for SNK's Neo Geo — a golf game and Metal Slug — and was bought by SNK on the strength of them.
Nazca was founded in May 1994 by a group of employees who left the arcade manufacturer Irem. Among them were Takashi Nishiyama, Kazuma Kujo and Yoshihiko Kodo, a former Irem executive who became Nazca's president. At Irem the team had worked on arcade action games including In the Hunt, GunForce II, Undercover Cops and Armed Police Unit Gallop, and that experience with detailed, hand-drawn sprite work carried directly into their new studio. Nazca developed for SNK's Neo Geo and released two games in 1996. Neo Turf Masters was a polished arcade golf game. Metal Slug was the one that made the studio's name: a run-and-gun shooter built from enormously detailed pixel animation, with soldiers, tanks and explosions animated in a cartoon-like style and full of small jokes, it became one of the most celebrated 2D action games ever made. Impressed by the success of both titles, SNK formally acquired Nazca in October 1996, and the team continued working on the Metal Slug series within SNK. It disbanded after SNK filed for bankruptcy in 2001, but Metal Slug outlived it and remains one of the Neo Geo's signature series.
Few studios are remembered for so short a list of releases. Nazca's reputation rests almost entirely on Metal Slug, whose animation set a standard for 2D sprite work at the very moment the industry was abandoning 2D for polygons.