Remembering Hudson Soft: When Hudson developed games for the competition
Remembering Hudson Soft: When Hudson developed games for the competition
Hudson Soft had their own console, in partnership with NEC, but that didn't stop them from making games for their competitors.
Hudson Soft, founded in the 70s, did just about everything a studio and publisher could do in the video game industry before it was fully absorbed into Konami on March 1, 2012. For the next month here at Retro XP, the focus will be on the roles the studio played, the games they developed, the games they published, the consoles they were attached to, and the legacy they left behind. After all, someone has to remember them, since Konami doesn’t always seem to. Previous entries in the series can be found through this link.
When it was announced in 2021 that Sega would be putting Genesis games on the Nintendo Switch Online service, right there alongside NES, SNES, and N64 classics, you could see quite a few folks losing their minds in real time. The idea of Sega games on a Nintendo console is still one that some people aren’t used to, even though the first Sega game on a Nintendo console was released all the way back in March of 2001, when Chu Chu Rocket was ported to the Game Boy Advance. First came the ports, then came originals, and, of course, Sonic the Hedgehog’s own line of GBA-exclusive games.
It’s been over 20 years, and Sega not only has put loads of its classic games on Nintendo systems again and again, they’ve also released Nintendo-specific titles for key franchises, and even have a long-term partnership going with their former rival in Mario & Sonic’s Olympics games. Sonic is in Super Smash Bros. games, Nintendo and Sega now share rights with the original Bayonetta, and it was all the way back in the era of the Wii that Sega Genesis games were digitally available for those willing to pay for them. And yet, despite all of this, “Sega is in my Nintendo!” is still a thing that can cause a double take for some.
None of this is a criticism, by the way: it’s just something that’s hardwired in to people who were around for the console wars of the 90s, and if they aren’t also obsessives who have been playing Sega games on 20-plus years’ worth of Nintendo consoles and handhelds, well, Genesis games being on what is the best-selling Nintendo console ever will elicit surprise.
Now, imagine that Sega was making games for their Genesis system in the 90s, but just to make sure that things worked out for the game and reached the largest audience possible, they also put that same title on the Super Nintendo. Or maybe there would be a Genesis-exclusive entry in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, but the SNES would get one, too. It didn’t happen, of course, and there is also no way it would have, either, not with the battle for market share that went on between the two, and Sega’s hyper-competitive nature that led them to some less than reasoned out business decisions that kept them from fully capitalizing on the success of the Genesis.
For Hudson, though? They put loads of games on their own systems, the Turbografx-16/PC Engine and their CD-ROM add-ons, as well, and continued their partnership with tech giant NEC in this space even when the latter was making some extremely baffling decisions that we’ll talk about later. Hudson also, however, developed games for the competition, and did so regularly. People are in awe that Microsoft would still have certain Activision or Zenimax games releasing on Sony platforms after acquiring those two companies, but that kind of thing was central to Hudson’s business plan in the late-80s and 90s, and their lack of interest in IP exclusivity was also part of why they were still able to succeed after their days with the Turbografx/PC Engine family of systems came to an end.
The PC Engine released in Japan in October of 1987, and its North American counterpart, the Turbografx-16, showed up in stores 10 months later in 1989. In those last few months of 1987, Hudson released five games for the PCE: China Warrior, Bikkuriman World, J.J. & Jeff, Shanghai, and Victory Run. You would not be wrong to think that this wasn’t the strongest launch window lineup going, but 1988 was a much better first-party year for the system, at least, and the ahead-of-their-time CD-ROM games weren’t all that far behind, either. What is a bit funny is that Hudson’s most memorable game from 1987 released after the PC Engine did, but didn’t come out for that system. Faxanadu, a spinoff of Nihon Falcom’s extremely successful computer game, Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu, was a Famicom/NES exclusive, and one of the better games on the system. It also never released on the PC Engine or the Turbografx, even though Hudson both developed and published it in Japan, and Nintendo only had international publishing rights, and even then that wasn’t until 1989.
SNK had a similar experience, releasing Crystalis on the NES/Famicom right before their Neo Geo home system released and then never porting it over, but at least there the argument exists that Crystalis was too long to be an arcade game, so it was a better fit for the living room-specific NES, anyway. Hudson has no such excuse with Faxanadu: sure, the portmanteau that is its name derives from “Famicom” and “Xanadu,” but we’ve already established that they put the pun-based PC Genjin games on other consoles, so that shouldn’t have been an impediment. Hudson was comfortable leaving that game on Nintendo’s third-generation system, and working on their own fourth-generation games for their fourth-gen system, instead.
This wasn’t a one-off experience. Hudson didn’t really spend time porting over their old NES titles in general, despite the fact that successful ports were a huge part of what Hudson was doing both before and during their time in the console wars. Milon’s Secret Castle released on the NES in 1986, and when it got a reworked re-release in 1993, that was on Nintendo’s Game Boy. The sequel to Milon’s Secret Castle, DoReMi Fantasy, was a Super Famicom exclusive: that, at least, released in 1996, two years after the end of the PC Engine/Turbografx, but also right in the middle of the PC-FX’s lifespan. The PC-FX was only a success when put up against systems like the Atari Jaguar, so… it’s pretty easy to see why Hudson put one of their own franchises on the 16-bit, still-successful Super Famicom instead of working out a 32-bit PC-FX game that comparatively no one would have purchased.
The original Star Soldier never made it to the PC Engine or Turbografx, either, nor did the original Adventure Island. The Star Soldier series, at least, would make its home there: while Star Soldier and Starship Hector remained on the NES, their successors, Super Star Soldier, Final Soldier, and Soldier Blade, all released exclusively on the shmup-centric PCE and TG-16. Adventure Island, however, concurrently split its time across three different systems, and appeared on the Game Boy, as well. The platformer first appeared on the Famicom/NES in 1986/87, and those systems would see four different releases, with the last of them exclusive to Japan. There would also be two Super Adventure Island games on the SNES, and just one — New Adventure Island — on the Turbografx. This is maybe the best example of Hudson simply going where the audience is. The SNES had succeeded the NES, sure, but the install base for the NES was large enough that games were still regularly released for it for years after its successor (which never surpassed its predecessor in sales) was introduced. The Super Famicom released in the fall of 1990: Kirby’s Adventure wouldn’t come out for nearly another 2.5 years after that. And another 26 months after Kirby’s NES outing came Master Takahashi's Adventure Island IV, the final release in the Famicom library.
Hudson made Adventure Island games throughout the life of their own console: the original predated the PCE/TG-16, but Adventure Island II released in 1991, Super Adventure Island (SNES), Adventure Island III (NES), and New Adventure Island (TG-16) released in ‘92, and Super Adventure Island II (SNES), Adventure Island IV (Famicom) both landed in ‘94.
The PC Engine was successful in Japan, outselling the Mega Drive by millions, but it still wasn’t quite at Nintendo’s level there. Internationally, it was no contest: the Turbografx-16 might have had a robust lineup even without Hudson giving it its full attention, but there were only around 2.5 million of the consoles sold: the install base could only be so big in a territory that was mostly being split between Nintendo and Sega. So, Hudson kept putting one of their most popular series on the most popular consoles, rather than keeping it all to their own system. It might seem like an odd decision if the goal was console supremacy, but Hudson’s behavior makes it seem a lot more like the goal was to be a successful business. Even if that meant working to enhance the competition.
Hudson would even sometimes publish games that appeared on multiple consoles. Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu was developed by Now Production, and Hudson published it for both the TG-16 and NES. Hudson handled Japanese publishing duties for the various versions of PC Genjin (Bonk’s Adventure) — again, a game literally named to be a pun for the Hudson console it appeared on first. While that series would end up sticking to Hudson’s own console for the second and third entries, Super Bonk would release for the SNES in 1994, rather than as a late-life addition to the PCE/TG-16 library.
There wasn’t a Bomberman game on the PCE/TG-16 until 1990, and just a year later, Bomberman II would release for the NES. Bomberman ‘93 and Bomberman ‘94 were Turbografx/PC Engine exclusives, but Super Bomberman would kick off a five-game subseries on the SNES/SFC in 1993, and games like puzzle spinoff Bomberman: Panic Bomber didn’t just appear on the still-living PC Engine: that also got a Neo Geo and Super Famicom release. As strange as it might sound to those who were once invested in the blood feud that was Sega vs. Nintendo, or are currently amped up because of the present-day arms race that Microsoft and Sony are engaging in, this is just who Hudson was. They went where the audience was, and didn’t seem all that bothered about whether that audience was on the console they were behind or another one. So long as the game sold, Hudson was getting paid for it, and then they could continue to make or distribute games.
This tendency likely kept them from completely collapsing when the aforementioned successor to the TG-16/PCE, the PC-FX, released. With just 400,000 units sold and an NEC-mandated focus on games based on popular anime that would feature pre-rendered animations, Hudson didn’t really have a place to put any of the franchises they were best known for. Bomberman would eventually get anime-style cutscenes (and its own anime, even), but it was still a top-down maze/arena game. Adventure Island was a 2D platformer, Star Soldier a series of shmups, and Tengai Makyō certainly focused on anime looks and cutscenes and such, but it was a JRPG: the PC-FX games in the series were a visual novel and a fighting game. Hudson couldn’t even get the jump on 3D polygonal graphics with the PC-FX, either, since the system lacked the necessary hardware for that, a fact that only stood out even more as the Saturn and Playstation specs were revealed.
Hudson had a console they were supposed to support but could not do so with their preexisting, popular franchises. They took those series elsewhere, to established systems that were still focused on 16-bit games, developed a partnership with Nintendo that would result in the Big N publishing quite a few Hudson games on their systems as well as a Wario/Bomberman crossover Game Boy title, and began working on 32-bit, next-gen games for the competition of the PC-FX. Bomberman would appear on the Sega Saturn a few times after just a brief, late-life appearance on the Genesis, and Hudson would put 19 games total on that console. The Playstation and N64 were both loaded with Bomberman titles, with the former getting seven Hudson games in total prior to the end of the PC-FX’s life, and the N64 sneaking in 13 titles in 1997-98. Star Soldier would make its return on the N64, games that were previously TG-exclusives like Military Madness showed up on the popular Playstation, the next Tengai Makyō game arrived on the Super Famicom, and so on. NEC had limited Hudson’s output for some reason, and Hudson decided to simply take their best business elsewhere, even while still partnering with NEC.
Well, sort of. Hudson had all of six games on the PC-FX between developing and publishing duties, though, that was also about 10 percent of the console’s entire library, so you are correct whether you say they did or did not support it.
The failure of the Jaguar killed off that version of Atari in 1992. Given how much Atari thrived during their peak — they were the ones synonymous with home consoles before Nintendo took that from them — it’s fair to say Hudson, too, could have been wiped off the map decades ago when the PC-FX faltered, if they hadn’t acted the way they did prior to that. No matter how many games they had released exclusively for the PC Engine or Turbografx, Nintendo was winning that generation, with Sega coming in second. The rise of Sony and the Playstation as the mid-90s approached only made for a busier marketplace to navigate, and Hudson managed to survive the failure of the PC-FX where companies like Atari did not outlive their own missteps in large part because they refused to ever keep all of their eggs in the PC-family basket. The Sega situation isn’t necessarily 1:1, but, like Hudson, they saw how things were going with the arrival of the PS2, and got out of the console business before it could do any more damage to their present or their future. Hudson long straddled a line that kept them from ever having to make that kind of decision: they simply did not renew their partnership with NEC, who exited the console space after the failure of the PC-FX, but Hudson stick around in the games space for well over another decade.
Hudson has been absorbed into Konami now, sure, but in between the end of the PC family of systems and when the full acquisition occurred in 2012, they released loads more games, creating new franchises while supporting and evolving the popular ones from their days in the console wars. Had their business plan of the 80s and early-90s been a little more Turbografx-centric instead of Hudson-centric, that might not have been how things went down. Their devotion to the competition seems odd and out of place, sure, but it’s part of what made Hudson what they were, and it’s a large part of why there is so much of the company to celebrate all this time later.
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