Masaya Nakamura, founder and leader of NAMCO through the Pac-Man years, was among the inductees of the newly-created Amusement Industry Hall of Fame.
In June 1955, Nakamura founded Nakamura Seisakusho and began creating coin-operated rides for department store rooftops across Japan. The starting point for Nakamura Seisakusho consisted of two mechanical horses on the roof of the Matsuya department store in Yokohama.
He broke into the arcade industry in 1974 after purchasing the Japanese branch of Atari and released popular Atari games throughout Japan through his company, which was now named NAMCO.
Under Nakamura’s leadership, NAMCO expanded its business endeavors to amusement facilities, theme parks, arcade games and home video game software. One of these ventures was the maze-action video game phenomenon known as Pac-Man (also inducted into the Amusement Industry Hall of Fame as one of the inaugural games). This simple yet enticing game exploded in popularity and Nakamura assisted each step of the way, quickly becoming known as “The Father of Pac-Man.”
After years of indispensable contributions to the amusement industry led by Nakamura, NAMCO merged with renowned toy manufacturer, BANDAI Co., and became the Bandai Namco Group. Thanks to Nakamura’s strong commitment to building a global entertainment company, the Bandai Namco companies continue to follow his founding philosophy of having pride in creating fun and fulfilling dreams for our audiences. Today, Bandai Namco Holdings has a market cap of roughly $13.9 billion and growing.