Jaleco

Jaleco Ltd. (ジャレコ) was founded as Japan Leisure Corporation on October 3, 1974 as a manufacturer of amusement equipment. In 1982, the company started developing and manufacturing arcade video games; as a result, Japan Leisure Corporation shortened its brand name to Jaleco in 1982 and formally changed its name to Jaleco Ltd in 1983.

Jaleco was a video game company whose focus lay in arcade titles, as well as titles for the NES and other popular computer and video game consoles of the 1980s and 1990s, most notably the Bases Loaded series and Carrier. The U.S. arm of Jaleco, Jaleco USA, was based near Chicago in the town of Wheeling, Illinois, and the European arm, Jaleco Europe, was based in London.

By 2000, Jaleco, still active in the development of arcade and console video games, hadn't produced any hit title in years and was in a struggling state. Its American division, Jaleco USA, had already left the arcade industry in 1993. On November 1, 2000, Jaleco was acquired by Hong-Kong company PCCW. Jaleco, renamed PCCW Japan, gave the PCCW Group a foothold in Japan. PCCW heavily restructured the company, shutting down Jaleco's arcade division and other non-profitable departments to focus on video games for consoles of the sixth generation era. PCCW Japan itself acquired on April 2001 the VR-1 Group which included VR-1 Entertainment, a U.S. developer of massively multiplayer online role playing games, to bring a more global focus to its current and future software endeavors. On October 2002, PCCW Japan merged Jaleco USA and VR-1 Entertainment to form Jaleco Entertainment, its new U.S. division that would be based in Buffalo, New York instead of Wheeling, Illinois. PCCW Japan reverted its name back to Jaleco in 2004.

After a number of internal restructures and sales, Jaleco Holding changed again its name this time to Emcom Holdings in April 2009, presumably to avoid confusion with Jaleco Ltd and to dissociate itself from a trademark that has long been associated to the video game industry. The Emcom group had been Jaleco Holding's most important division since 2008. Emcom Holdings now focuses on real estate, securities, technology and finance business. For the first time in 35 years, the company is not involved in the video game or amusement industry.

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Jaleco

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