One of the principals in the great video games revolution of the 1970s, Masaya Nakamura, has died at the age of 91.
Nakamura, president of Namco, was at the head of the company during its heyday, when it created, among other famous games, Pac-Man. Although he died on January 22, his death was only announced yesterday by Bandai Namco, the company where he was still an honorary advisor.
Nakamura was an entrepreneur who specialised in toys and games. He started in the industry in 1955 when he installed two wooden horses for children to ride on the roof of a department store. It was successful. He continued with children’s rides, securing a deal with major Japanese department store Mitsukoshi to provide a small ride using cars on tracks. It was installed on the roof of the main Mitsukoshi store in Tokyo - again it succeeded.
It was in the 1970s that Nakamura hired software engineers for his Nakamura Manufacturing – which was to be abbreviated to Namco – making games for arcades. Galaxian came first, a successful similar-themed game to Space Invaders, the Taito classic. He sold Galaxian to US developer Midway Games in 1979. His company went on to develop Pac-Man in 1980 when employee Toru Iwatani was inspired by the shape of a pizza with a slice missing. The name of Pac-Man came from the Japanese "pakku", or "gobble"in English.
A succession of Pac-Man derivatives followed, plus a TV animation series, considerable merchandise products and even a pop song. Namco was to continue to make video games, of course, and it moved into theme parks in Japan and then the movie industry. Nakamura even bought Atari’s Japanese subsidiary company from Nolan Bushnell. He was at the helm until 2002, when he became more of a figurehead and in 2005 Namco merged with rival Bandai.
Records in Japan in 2005 showed Nakamura as the 68th most wealthy person in the country. He was born in Yokohama in 1925, going to the local university to study marine engineering.
