Arc System Works is a Japanese video game company. Founded in 1988 as Arc Co., Ltd., it spent its early years laboring in obscurity as a contract developer for the likes of Sega, Face and Banpresto before coming into its own as a publisher in 1995. Since then it has created quite a few of the modern fighting games. Examples include Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, and Battle Fantasia.
Not to be confused with the similarly named but otherwise unrelated Aksys Games, a North American distributor known for publishing many of their games in the US. They also have a European branch in the form of Zen United/pQube.
The main team responsible for Guilty Gear and BlazBlue, originally named "Team Neo Blood," was composed of Samurai Shodown, The Last Blade, and The King of Fighters developers from SNK, which explains why many characters in the first Guilty Gear game are blatant expies or amalgamations of characters from those games, and typical gameplay in their titles tends to be heavily high-damage and combo-oriented, with lots of juggling.
Since then, the company has split itself among two teams: "Team Red" - focused more on ''Guilty Gear'', and "Team Blue", responsible for ''BlazBlue'' and other sprite-based games.
Early games developed by Arc for other companies:
- Battletoads (Sega Genesis version)
- Double Dragon (Sega Master System version)
- Michael Jackson's Moonwalker (Sega Master System version)
- Minesweeper (Game Boy and PC Engine versions)
- Sailor Moon
- Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S: Jougai Rantou!? Shuyaku Soudatsusen (uncredited, published by Angel)
- Sailor Moon: Another Story
- Zipang (PC Engine version)
- Strikers 1945 Plus (PlayStation Portable version)
- Ys
- Ys IV: Mask of the Sun (PlayStation 2 version)
- Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand (PlayStation 2 version)
Games and series developed by Arc System Works (in whole or in part):
- Arcana Heart 3 (console and PC ports only)
- Arc Style: Baseball!! 3D
- Battle Fantasia
- Birthdays the Beginning
- BlazBlue
- Castle Shikigami III (co-developed by Alfa System)
- Chaos Code (publisher)
- Code Shifter
- Damascus Gear
- Double Dragon IV
- Dragon Ball
- Dragon Ball Z: Supersonic Warriors
- Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butouden
- Dragon Ball FighterZ
- DNF Duel (co-developed by 8ing/Raizing)
- The Family/Okiraku [X] game series on WiiWare and on Nintendo 3DS via eShop
- Fist of the North Star: Twin Blue Stars of Judgment
- Getsuei Academy Kou (a former doujin game in collaboration with Tomokazu Sugita)
- Granblue Fantasy Versus (co-developed with Cygames)
- Guilty Gear
- Hoshigami Remix
- Inferno Climber
- Jake Hunter
- KILL la KILL - IF (publisher)
- Magical Beat
- Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code (publisher, Steam version)
- Mistover (publisher)
- Of Mice and Sand
- One Piece: Grand Pirate Colosseum
- Pizza Pop!
- Skullgirls 2nd Encore (publisher, Japan)
- Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters (co-developed with Toy Box, Inc.)
- Under Night In-Birth (co-developed with French Bread)
- Wizard's Symphony
Games and series acquired by Arc System Works from Technos Japan
Games and series developed by Arc System Works (in part):
- Hard Corps: Uprising (co-developed with Konami)
- Persona
- Persona 4: Arena (in collaboration with Atlus)
- Persona 4: Arena Ultimax (in collaboration with Atlus)
- Sengoku Basara X (in collaboration with Capcom)
- DNF Duel (In collaboration with Neople and Eighting)
- RWBY: Arrowfell (co-developed with Wayforward Technologies in collaboration with Rooster Teeth)
