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Creator / Hudson Soft

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/256px-Hudson_svg_4857.png
"BY HUDSON!"

Hudson Soft Co., Ltd. was a Japanese electronics company founded on May 18, 1973 by brothers Yuji and Hiroshi Kudo as Honeybee Soft in Sapporo. It began developing and publishing computer games in 1978, but the company only became a big name in video games in 1983, the year it released the first Bomberman game.

From 1985 to 1992, Hudson Soft ran the "Hudson All-Japan Caravan Festival" tournaments in Japan. These contests were the origin of the 2-minute and 5-minute modes found in many of the Star Soldier games.

Hudson also has the distinction of being Nintendo's very first third-party developer, signing on to make games for the Famicom in 1984; their first game on that platform was Nuts & Milk. Hudson Soft was also responsible for porting several Nintendo games to the PC-88 and other Japanese home computer systems, such as Balloon Fight, Donkey Kong 3, Excitebike, Golf, Ice Climber, Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros.. Hudson Soft additionally produced ports of Lode Runner for NES and Star Force for MSX and Famicom (but not the later NES version).

In 1987, Hudson collaborated with NEC to produce the PC Engine console (also known as the TurboGrafx-16).

After its main bank, the Hokkaido Takushoku Bank, collapsed in 1997, Hudson entered the Osaka Stock Exchange in 2000. This intrigued Konami to the point where it acquired a majority interest in Hudson in 2001. On April 1, 2011, Hudson became a fully-owned subsidiary of Konami; its US branch, Hudson Entertainment, was also disintegrated as a result. Around this time, former company president Hidetoshi Endo migrated to Nintendo's restructured NDcube division, taking quite a few Hudson developers with him. Then, on March 1, 2012, Konami formally absorbed Hudson, ending the latter company's thirty-eight year run as a major video game developer. The final game released prior to Konami's absorption was Tetris: Axis.

After its closure, Hudson Soft as an autonomous entity was no more; Konami Digital Entertainment assumed all development and publishing duties for existing properties, including Bomberman.

List of games developed by Hudson Soft

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