SNK

Founded: 1978 (original)
2001-08-01 (current)

T-series code: T-31, T-473

Headquarters:

	Osaka, Japan
	17 Great Oaks Boulevard, San Jose, California 95119, United States

SNK Co., Ltd. (株式会社SNK) (Shin Nihon Kikaku) is a Japanese video game publisher and developer. The company is widely recognized for its contributions to the fighting game genre, particularly with the King of Fighters series, and is also known for popular titles like Metal Slug and Samurai Shodown.

Company

SNK Playmore logo

The company was founded as Shin Nihon Kikaku (新日本企画, lit. "New Japan Project") by Eikichi Kawasaki in 1978, who presided over SNK until its collapse in fall 2000, due to (purportedly deliberate) under-financing by then-parent company Aruze. SNK's properties were then scattered out amongst several other entities, from Korean-based Eolith and Mega Enterprises to Japan-based Noise Factory. However, in anticipation of Aruze's actions, Kawasaki founded a new holding company by the name of Playmore (プレイモア), then spent the following year chasing down the rights to these intellectual properties; as of mid-2002, Kawasaki had regained all of SNK's property—most recently, the SNK name itself. As such, in 2003, the company name was changed to SNK Playmore (SNKプレイモア). Many of SNK's former staff, as of 2000, is currently employed at the new company. Even so, there remains a division in some sections of the fan community, where for every person who thinks Playmore has done a great job so far, given the circumstances, a certain number remain disgruntled over the changes of the past few years.

SNK is best known for its Neo Geo video game console and arcade system, which they have been developing for since the early 1990s. The majority of their popular games were released for the Neo Geo, and some were later ported over to other more popular systems. SNK also had a few variations of the Neo Geo, such as the Neo Geo Gold, the Neo Geo CD, the Neo Geo CDZ, and the Neo Geo 64. They also made two handheld systems, the Neo Geo Pocket and the Neo Geo Pocket Color.

In late 1995 Sega and SNK signed an exclusivity deal, securing a number of Neo Geo games for conversion to the Sega Saturn. In return, Sega were due to bring some of its library over to the Neo Geo CD, something which never materialised.

In December 2016, SNK Playmore was renamed to SNK again.^[1] Sega Logistics Service announced that on March 31, 2017, it would end maintenance on SNK Playmore's Atomiswave games.^[2]^[3]

Romstar

Main article: Romstar.

In 1984, SNK established Romstar, an American branch founded to distribute the company's games in the United States. However, the branch seemed to be a somewhat-independent operation (as SNK would establish the more-official SNK of America only three years later) and also distributed games for a number of other companies, such as Sega, Capcom, and Taito. Romstar would continue to work closely with SNK through the late 1980's, when it was eventually folded into Capcom USA sometime in the early 1990's.