Tose <-> PCE connection? Perhaps, perhaps not.

[esteban]

Who really makes the games you play? Outsourcing VG development to Tose... since 1979. (1up article)

This was on digg. Definitely worth a minute of your time.

No mention was made of Tose developing PCE games... but who knows?

Wikipedia on Tose Co., Ltd.
Gamasutra on Tose


Tose <-> PCE connections ?
OK, it seems NEC INTER CHANNEL CO., LTD. , was listed as a client (in Tose's 2000 annual report (it's a .pdf file!) ... I thought NEC Interchannel only made TUBE SLIDER, right? (Johnny Turbo Board members may recall the Tube Slider discussions ). And yes, I studied the picture of video game boxes (page 10) in this report... I saw PlayStation, Saturn, Famicom, SFC, Gameboy... no PCE stuff (not that they would have used PCE in 2000, but still...).

Interchannel's current site: Console Software

Anyway, someone who actually understands Japanese can probably do a lot better than I at finding clues in the Tose <-> PCE mystery . For example, when did NEC (or any PCE publisher / developer) first become a client of Tose? Early enough (1996) to possibly be involved with the titles below? Could NEC Interchannel be a catch-all term for many prior NEC relationships (NEC Avenue)?

Could Tose be responsible for PCE Altered Beast? Or how about TG-16 Gunboat?

Neither the corporate report nor the Official Tose Site mention direct involvement with PCE.



Rudimentary research (errr... speculation)

NEC Interchannel, Ltd.

1. De Ja (1996) -- NEC Interchannel used Tose to port this? I'm not sure if this was a popular ELF title (someone can tell us, perhaps? Kaminari?), but I would assume it had to be fairly successful as a computer game before anyone would be interested in a PCE port, right?

2. Puyo Puyo CD Tsu (1996) -- NEC Interchannel used Tose to port this classic from Compile?


NEC Interchannel

1. Tenchi Muyo FX (1996) -- I don't know anything about this title.

Summary
Tose was often used to port popular titles to various platforms, so it is not inconceivable that they might have been involved in PCE projects. What do you think?

[Black Tiger]

Tose is just a workforce agency. They save publishers from always hiring new teams to take on certain projects.

There's a company like that around here called Man Power. They supply all kinds of businesses with laborers short and long term. You can show up at some of their offices and get sameday work without a resume. When I started my last job for a major worldwide company, I applied at their branch and got hired and all, but they paid Man Power to pay me. It didn't make any sense, but they had a hiring freeze at the time and apparently this was a loophole they used.

It sounds like pretty much all the games Tose works on are designed by the companies they work for and they just does all the labor. Starfy probably has Tose's name on it because it was the exception to the rule. They probably began developing it and showed it to Nintendo to see if they were interested in it.

So they probably worked on a ton of PC Engine games and if the article is correct, they definitely worked on the PCE Dragon Ball Z games.

But it also sounds like a revolving door company, so even more so that the big name developers, even though the company worked on many games over the years, the teams are probably radically different game by game and/or year by year.

[esteban]

So they probably worked on a ton of PC Engine games and if the article is correct, they definitely worked on the PCE Dragon Ball Z games.

But it also sounds like a revolving door company, so even more so that the big name developers, even though the company worked on many games over the years, the teams are probably radically different game by game and/or year by year.

Yeah, I don't think we'll ever get information on who comprised the development teams within Tose, but that's a separate issue. I was simply interested in identifying which games were developed by Tose for PCE. Tose has done a lot of work porting game across various platforms, so PCE ports + known customers (i.e. NEC) are the only leads we have to go on.

I wonder if the Japanese PCE resources have any worthwhile speculation on this issue?

[termis]

Interesting read. 

ACD Strider?