UPL

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UPL Co., Ltd. (株式会社ユーピーエル), formerly known as Universal Playland (ユニバーサルプレイランド)[1], was a Japanese video game developer which ported a number of its popular arcade titles to home consoles like the Sega Mega Drive. It also published games by developers NMK and Treco, while licensing additional titles to publishers like American Sammy.

History

UPL's headquarters in Oyama.

UPL was founded in February 1972 as a subsidiary of the Japanese entertainment conglomerate Universal Entertainment. In November 1983, the company was renamed to UPL.[1]

As UPL entered the early 1990's, business began to decline, eventually prompting the company to declare bankruptcy in March 1992. One of UPL's former staff, Tsutomu Fujisawa, would go on to establish Scarab two months later.[2]

Most of UPL's IPs were purchased by Hamster Corporation, while the Ninja JaJaMaru-kun IP was purchased by Jaleco (later by City Connection).

Softography

References

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NEC Retro has more information related to UPL
  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 @nekoma on Twitter (Wayback Machine: 2019-12-08 13:53)
  2. http://www.scarab-jp.com/SCARAB_profile.html (Wayback Machine: 2003-08-11 07:55)