Who Made Assault?
The game copyright says Namco and Atari. So who really made it?
Page 1 of the Operators Manual states: "Assault is engineered and designed by Namco, Ltd. Manufactures by Atari Games, Trademark and (c) by Namco 1988."
At the time, Namco owned Atari games. (Atari has since changed ownership 2 or 3 times.) It was common for Atari to distribute games in the US that Namco created in Japan. They did this with another popular game... something called "Pac-Man".
Who made what:
| Namco | Atari |
| Hardware board Software & ROM's Sound & Music (Stereo output from board) Schematics in the Operators Manual |
Wood Cabinet, Monitor Single speaker in the cabinet All text in the Operators Manual Marketing & Sales in the USA |
It's pretty clear which company did what. High quality stuff was from Namco, slapped together stuff from Atari. Guess which company is doing better today?
There's some interesting trivia about Namco at http://huizen.dds.nl/~galaxian/ Among other things, Namco was called "Nakamura Manufacturing Limited" until 1972.
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