is the video game division of Sun Electronics Corporation (Sun Denshi), a Japanese company founded in 1971.In 1978, Sun Electronics began producing Arcade Games. The company never became a major player in the arcades, though Sunsoft continued sporadically to develop arcade games into the 1990s.
In 1985, Sun Electronics began releasing games for the Nintendo Family Computer under the Sunsoft label. A few years later, the company began to distribute NES games in the U.S. through Sun Corporation of America. In 1988, Sunsoft formed a partnership with Tokai Engineering (TEC); it was actually a dummy corporation created by Sunsoft to circumvent Nintendo’s limitations on publishing how many games on the Famicom/NES in a year, coinciding with a dramatic improvement in their quality. Sunsoft also became heavily interested in producing Licensed Games and console ports of computer games.
The changing economics of video game development were not kind to Sunsoft. In 1995, the company escaped bankruptcy, selling off a few games to be released by Acclaim. A more serious decline became evident around 2001, when its international distribution channels closed. What saved Sunsoft from extinction was the advent of online game services; as well as making many of their older games available on Nintendo's Virtual Console and other online platforms, Sunsoft has released a small number of original downloadable games. Most of their mobile output in the 2000s and 2010s was Mahjong and others in the Puzzle Game genre, but since the 2020s, a lot them are highly casual and simplistic 3D games similar in style to others known for receiving millions of downloads. While not as well-known or received as their previous output, one of them being called Clock Tower: Ready for the Next that uses chibi sprites and locations inspired by Clock Tower (1995) led to hopes on social media of them developing a sequel or remake in that series. That said, those rudimentary mobile games have been removed in 2023.
Games developed/published by Sunsoft include:
- Aero the Acro-Bat series (developed by Iguana Entertainment)
- Astra Superstars
- Atlantis no Nazo
- Blaster Master series
- Bay Route
- Chameleon Twist series (developed and released in Japan by Japan System Supply)
- Clock Tower 3 (co-developed with Capcom)
- Daze Before Christmas (publisher)
- Deae Tonosama Appare Ichiban
- Galaxy Fight
- Gimmick! (1992)
- Hard Edge (also known as T.R.A.G. - Mission of Mercy in North America)
- Hebereke
- Ufouria is the European release of Hebereke.
- Ikki
- Ikki Unite
- Journey to Silius
- Kangaroo
- Power Quest (developed by Japan System Supply)
- Quest: Brian's Journey (developed by Imagineer in Japan, developed by Sunsoft in America)
- The Wing Of Madoola
- Trip World
- Waku Waku 7
Licenced Games
- The Addams Family: Uncle Fester's Quest
- Batman games
- Daffy Duck: Fowl Play
- Gremlins 2: The New Batch
- Justice League Task Force
- Looney Tunes
- Looney Tunes Acme Animation Factory (SNES game that uses the SNES Mouse)
- Looney Tunes B-Ball (Developed by Sculpted Entertainment, later known as Acclaim Salt Lake City)
- Road Runner's Death Valley Rally (developed by ICOM Simulations)
- Super Spy Hunter
- Super Fantasy Zone
- Taz-Mania (developed by Visual Concepts for the SNES and Palmer Productions for the Game Boy)
- The Death and Return of Superman (developed by Blizzard Entertainment)
Cancelled/Unreleased games
- Sunmannote
