Gaming Ads: Jaleco USA

Jaleco Ltd. was founded in 1974 as Japan Leisure Co., Ltd. and manufactured amusement games. In 1982 it entered the arcade game industry and in 1983 shortened its name to Jaleco. Based in Illinois, Jaleco USA opened around 1988 to distribute arcade titles and publish home video games. Through 1994 all of its console and handheld games were for Nintendo platforms (NES, SNES, Game Boy) as it didn't publish its first non-Nintendo games until 1995 when the 32-bit generation arrived with the releases of the Sega Saturn and Sony's PlayStation (PS).

While Jaleco published a wide variety of games, it is best known for its long running baseball series of games called Bases Loaded. No less than eight Bases Loaded games were released between 1988 and 1995. Jaleco only released two games for Sega platforms -- Base Loaded '96 for Saturn and Carrier for Dreamcast -- as it focused on the PlayStation in the late '90s, releasing 14 PS games from 1995-2000. In 2000 Jaleco was purchased by Hong Kong-based Pacific Century CyberWorks (PCCW). Jaleco USA merged with PCCW's VR-1 Entertainment to become Jaleco Entertainment in 2002.

Jaleco Entertainment released a few new titles across the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Nintendo GameCube, as well as some Virtual Console games for the Wii. The North American Jaleco branch went out of business sometime between 2008 and 2011. In Japan there were a few more company name changes though it went bankrupt in 2014. A company called Hamster Corporation may own some of Jaleco's properties today as it has re-published a few former Jaleco games digitally for current game consoles.

Jaleco USA albums: Facebook - Google Photos