Who are your favorite Japanese Developers?

[Zed Clampet]

While this is not a competition, if you say "Nintendo", you lose anyway.

A lot of times I don't know where these small games I play are made unless there is a story. I enjoy Japanese humor and can usually identify it pretty easily. While the small team and solo development scene still has a ways to go in Japan, it is gradually growing, and more solo developer games are beginning to show up. I'm going to have to go with larger studios though, for the most part.

With the hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours I've put into Total War games, I thought about listing Sega, but it's really just Creative Assembly that I like, and they are British.

Soooo...

PocketPair:​

Their CEO is hilarious and constantly trolls everyone. Currently he's trolling the anti-DEI people, which is especially funny since he just finished trolling the pro-DEI people.

I've played and very much enjoyed both Craftopia and PalWorld.

Their fight against Nintendo has won my everlasting love.

Capcom:​

Really only Resident Evil, but there have been a lot of those, and Resident Evil 4 is one of my all-time favorites.

Spike Chunsoft:​

I've played about 6 or 7 of their visual novels, which include the Danganropa series and the nonsensical conspiracy puzzle-story games Zero Escape.

Swery​

Weird and hilarious.

Chilla's Art​

Maker of short-form horror games.

I might become an Atlus fan in the near future....

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Fromsoft made some of my favourite games of the last 15 or 20 years. Nintendo makes really fun interesting and clever games even if they treat their fans badly with pricing and emulation stuff.

Looking through my library I dont have a lot of Japanese games outside of Fromsoft. I dont care for most JRPGs these days, and Ive really tried to like the newer Resident Evil games but just havent clicked with any of them yet, same thing with Metal Gear and Death Stranding. I have Katamari Damacy on Switch and its a fun time but nothing special.

I have the new Silent Hill games on my list to try, and Swery and Suda 51 games sound like fun.

 

[Frindis]

Daka Suru by FromSoftware, RE4 & RE7: Biohazard by Capcom, making both companies some of my favorites.

 

[Pifanjr]

I've definitely enjoyed quite a few Nintendo games, but I don't like them as a developer. I've also spent a lot of time on Pokémon games, but I don't particularly like Game Freak either, especially with how terrible the new games look.

On the other hand, I only played a little bit of Palworld and didn't really care for it, but I do like the attitude of PocketPair. They seem to at least really enjoy the creative process.

 

[dxchase]

KOEI/TECMO

This (just KOEI at the time) developer is the one that got me into Asian culture-filled games starting with Nobunaga's Ambition and Genghis Khan 2 back in the day on the SNES. They put out amazing Ninja Gaiden and Dynasty Warrior entries. So my nomination goes to them.

I understand that KOEI sat on a lot of games as a publisher, but they used resources and developer people from KOEI to work on games "developed" by the likes of Team Ninja, Omega Force and GUST.

If i had to pick one from there, hands down Team Ninja.

 

[Johnway]

Interestingly quite a few:

Favs is Capcom and Atlus. The latter giving me all that JRPG goodness and Capcom being generally a well rounded publisher that delivers the goods in both quality and entertainment.

SNK more for their arcade neo geo games rather than their fighting series. i would also give nintendo an honourable mention as i grudgingly admit that their games are good and they always seem to pull something else out of the bag when it comes to new ideas.

i suppose From soft for their Souls games. SEGA had a good run of classics and they still release decent stuff from time to time.

Finally Konami. back in the 90s during the 8/16 bit era they were kings. Then by the 00s they slowly started becoming rubbish and eventually bowing out of gaming for the most part to concentrate on pachinko or whatever they do now. I'll remember them for their classics, but i won't be missing their horrible business practices.

 

[Zloth]

Square for the Final Fantasy series, The Last Remnant, NieR Automata, and maybe some others.

Kojima Productions probably will be eventually, given current trajectories. Give me time to play Metal Gear Solid Δ, Death Stranding 2, and at least one other. Maybe a few others if the FF7 reboot sticks the landing.