Gaming Ads: Takara U.S.A.

Based in Japan, Takara is a toy company founded in 1955. I've previously mentioned Takara in a couple of toy-related posts, one about Transformers and another about Tomy. Transformers is the toy Takara is best known for, though in Japan the toyline is known as Diaclone. It entered the video game industry in the late '70s and during the early '80s primarily published games for a Japanese computer known as Sord M5 before moving onto console games. As you'll see in the ads, Takara brought a lot of SNK's arcade games to consoles. Aside from SNK ports, it's also known for the Battle Arena Toshinden series (developed by Tamsoft) and games based on its Penny Racers (ChoroQ) toys. Takara U.S.A. doesn't appear to have been in business for very long; it published games in North America during the early to mid-'90s.

In 2003 Takara bought a controlling stake in Atlus but sold it to Index Holdings after it merged with Tomy in 2006. While it is known as Takara Tomy in Japan, only the Tomy name is used in other countries. That was the end of the Takara name in gaming for North America though Tomy did publish games for a few more years, most of which were based on Shonen Jump's Naruto.

Takara U.S.A. albums: Facebook - Google Photos