Aruze
Aruze, formerly
Universal Sales Co. LTD, is a Japanese
pachinko and
slot machine manufacturer. They are best known in the
USA for their subsidiary,
Universal USA Inc., an
arcade game company that operated throughout the late 1970's and early 1980's.
As
Universal, their greatest hit was the game
Mr. Do! in
1982, which spawned four sequels.
Lady Bug was also a successful game. Cashing-in on the success of
laserdisc video games, Universal released
Super Don Quix-ote in
1984, on a new standardized laserdisc video game system they called the
Universal System 1. A new game was planned every six months for the
Universal System 1, including a laserdisc adventure game based on
Mr. Do!, but the company stopped producing arcade games in
1985, and
Super Don Quix-ote ended up being the only game released for the system.
Universal Sales Co. LTD sold off their video game manufacturing arms in the 1990's to
Capcom.
In
2000, the company bought out the video game company
SNK, maker of the popular
Neo-Geo. In exchange for the use of SNK's popular characters on their pachinko and slot machines, and a few sub-par games for the Neo-Geo, Aruze held on to SNK's
IPs until SNK reformed as
Playmore and bought them back in
2001.
Eikichi Kawasaki, the SNK founder and current owner, would shortly successfully sue Aruze which they were ordered to awarded the newly renamed SNK Playmore 5.64 billion yen, most of the original amount Kawasaki originally sued them for.
Apparently, Aruze enjoyed their short stint as a video game manufacturer, since they have announced in August of
2004 the production of the
AP-3 arcade system; their modern,
Linux-based equivalent to SNK's recently-retired
Neo-Geo MVS arcade system.
Aruze is developing a line of
flat screen JAMMA arcade cabinets called
SlimStreet, that are only 480mm deep. Whether or not
dedicated AP-3 machines will exclusively use
SlimStreet cabinets remains to be seen.
*
Official website*
Japanese official website*
Company History*
List of games by Universal on the Killer List of Videogames
