In The '90s, ADK only made games for the Neo Geo arcade machine and console until 2003, when they filed for bankruptcy. After that, SNK bought ADK's properties and inserted them into their universe, starting with the Crisis Crossover Fighting Game NeoGeo Battle Coliseum in 2005, where appearing alongside characters from SNK's own franchises such as The King of Fighters, were characters from World Heroes and Aggressors of Dark Kombat, some of ADK's more famous games from their 90s glory period. And that was just the beginning.
ADK made a variety of games: in The '80s made various sports games and combat flight Simulation Games, some of them licenced by external companies as SEGA and SNK (before they went exclusive), but in The '90s ADK expanded more making action-adventure Games and fighting games, with World Heroes series probably their most famous title (and to some their only well known one). After shutting down, ADK lives on, with their characters appearing in SNK games mostly as cameos and releasing compilations of their classic work.
Notably, the Neo Geo was co-developed by ADK with SNK, being an evolution of the Motorola 68k-based architecture used in ADK's late 80s games like Time Soldiers.
SNK Wiki has an article about ADK here
. Remember, this is for the Japanese video game company, not to be confused with ADK dubbing for anime series, the Assessment and Deployment Kit for Windows and Android, the Consumer Activation Company (also from Japan)... nor any of these other ADK.
Some of ADK most famous developed games:
- ADK World (1995)
- Aggressors of Dark Kombatnote (1994)
- Blue's Journeynote (1991)
- Champion Baseball (1983)
- Crossed Swords series (1991-1995)
- Gang Wars
- Magician Lord (1990)
- Make Traxnote (1981)
- Melon Chan's Growth Diarynote (1998)
- Ninja Combat (1990)
- Ninja Commando (1992)
- Ninja Master's - Hao Ninpo Cho (1996)
- Shōgi no Tatsujin: Master of Syougi (1995)
- Thrash Rally (1991)
- Time Soldiersnote (1987)
- Twinkle Star Spritesnote (1996)
- World Heroes series (1992-1995)
Tropes present in ADK and in many of their games:
- Three-Quarters View: Various of their Action-Adventure Games.
- The Alliance: SNK not just licenced various ADK games in The '80s and The '90s, also they helped ADK in various of their games, most prominently World Heroes series (where there're credited as ADK/SNK). And ADK designed Neo Geo for SNK, too.
- Arcade-Perfect Port: All the ports to Neo Geo consoles, mostly Neo-Geo AES and Neo-Geo CD.
- Coca-Pepsi, Inc.: After bankruptcy, ADK properties was bought by SNK and now the characters and games from ADK are part of SNK's Shared Universe.
- Compilation Re Release: Mostly from SNK:
- World Heroes Anthologynote , compilation of the 4 games (1, 2, 2 Jet and Perfect) released in 2008 for PlayStation 2.
- ADK Tamashii (Japan-only), also released on 2008 for PS2. Different of WHA, here's a compilation of 5 ADK famous games from Neo-Geo era: Ninja Combat, Ninja Commando, Ninja Master's, Aggressors of Dark Kombat and Twinkle Star Sprites, all of them with original new artworks exclusive for this game compilation.
- And also a lot of ADK games inside SNK's Virtual Console releases between 2007 and 2011: World Heroes series, Aggressors of Dark Kombat, Blue's Journey/Raguy, Magician Lord, Ninja Combat, Ninja Commando, Ninja Master's, Crossed Swords 1 and Twinkle Star Sprites.
- Cute 'em Up: Twinkle Star Sprites.
- Continuation/Uncancelled: This game was some of the last ones released by ADK before bankruptcy. Years later, after being bought by SNKP, 2 games were released: Twinkle Star Sprites: La Petite Princesse (2005) and Twinkle Star Sprites Gaiden: Twin Star Memories (2007).
- Faux First Person 3D: Crossed Swords series, basically a medieval Punch-Out!!.
- Game Within a Game: ADK World, the parallel to Capcom World series.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: This happened in The '80s when ADK (in that time Alpha Denshi) was just the developer and the games were published by other companies like SEGA and SNK.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Mostly in Crossed Swords series and in Ninja games. Or where swords appear in their games (World Heroes included).
- Japanese Spirit: In various of their games, especially with the Ninja theme or with ninjas on them. Especially marked on Aggressors of Dark Kombat's Goh Kidokoro motif.
- Ninja:
- The ninjas are present especially in 90s ADK era, appearing as characters in various games and even having some with this theme, specifically Ninja Combat, Ninja Commando and Ninja Master's.
- In their most famous game series, World Heroes, the Hero Protagonists are Hanzou Hattori and Kotaro Fuuma, which are ninjas.
- Nintendo Hard: Since the beginning, but more especially when it was third-party for SNK.
- No Celebrities/Historical Figures Were Harmed: World Heroes series, which characters are historical characters (as well actual sportsmen) represented in the series. Also in Ninja Master's.
- No Plot? No Problem!: The first ADK games in The '80s.
- Obligatory Corporate Initialism: Alpha Denshi Corp. changed officially to ADK in 1993, even when they used it before in their games.
- Recursive Acronym: ADK stands for Alpha Denshi Kabushiki kaisha. "Kabushiki kaisha" means "Corporation" in Japanese. Try to Fit That on a Business Card.
- Shared Universe: After being bought by SNK, ADK characters were added to SNK Universe as a whole, being their stories happened in the same universe than SNK games. The best examples are seen in SVC: Card Fighters DS in which there's an action card with Janne fighting side-by-side with Charlotte during The French Revolution, and in Days of Memories series with Kisarah being friend of Athena Asamiya.
- Simulation Games: Various of his 80s arcade games were mostly Flight and Sports Simulation Games.
- SNK Boss: World Heroes' bosses, especially Neo Dio and Zeus.
- Vector Game: Some of first ADK games and Crossed Swords series for the first-person character.
