hudson

Hudson Soft Co., Ltd. was a Japanese video game company that released numerous games for video game consoles, home computers and mobile phones, mainly from the 1980s to the 2000s. It was headquartered in the Midtown Tower in Tokyo Midtown, Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo, Japan, with an additional office in the Hudson Building in Sapporo.

Hudson Soft was founded on May 18, 1973. Initially, it dealt with personal computer products, but later expanded to the development and publishing of video games, mobile content, video game peripherals and music recording.

Primarily a video game publisher, it internally developed many of the video games it released while outsourcing others to external companies. It is known for series such as Bomberman, Adventure Island, Star Soldier, and Bonk. Hudson also developed video games released by other publishers such as the Mario Party series from Nintendo.

Hudson Soft made the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 in association with NEC Corporation, to compete against Nintendo, SEGA, and SNK, while continuing making games on other platforms as a third-party developer.

The mascot of the company is a bee named Hachisuke. Hudson Soft ceased to exist as a company on March 1, 2012, and merged with Konami Digital Entertainment, which was the surviving entity. Konami owns the assets of Hudson and has since rereleased its video game back catalogue on different occasions.