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Mourning the End of Jaleco

Posted by Joe Keiser

Wait, Jaleco was still around?

Well, yes, actually, though the games the company’s been putting out in recent years have been…curious. We’ll get to that in a minute. First, the story: Jaleco Holdings, after being in the industry continuously since the early 80s, has ended its 25-year gaming history by selling off its videogame branch.

It’s sad news. Jaleco’s always been a weird C-lister in the world of console gaming, but it was the weird C-lister you always expected to be around because, well, you couldn’t fathom how it had even gotten to where it was in the first place. So let’s send the old girl off with a look at its palpably crazy history of releases.

(And yes, this article is just an excuse to embed a bunch of Stepping Selection videos after the jump. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry. You’ll soon not forget.)

1985: Jaleco releases City Connection. In 2010, I will celebrate my 25th year of having its theme song stuck in my head.

1988: This was the year the company really hit the ground running in the States, with the release of Bases Loaded. We now know the NES version so many people love was ninja developed by the infamous secret game developers TOSE.

1991: The company releases Totally Rad (the source of our dweeby screenshot above). It is not. Also this year is the US release of Whomp ‘Em, which I’m required by law to mention in any Jaleco retrospective.

1994: Jaleco craps out The Peace Keepers on the SNES. Out of all the undeserving games pimped by the magazines of the era, this is I think the only one I am still mad about buying.

1996: The company falls off the map during the PlayStation era, in so much as it was ever on the map. Tetris Plus came out this year.

2000: Jaleco hits its last hurrah in the US with Carrier, the Dreamcast survival horror game that was actually pretty good for the time. But we don’t care about that in the face of the company’s other big (and Japan-only) 2000 release, the terrifying DDR clone Stepping Selection. Cue the music!

2002: Jaleco is briefly rebranded as PCCW Japan during this time. The company put out an obscure Japanese beat ‘em up called Raging Bless this year. It’s one of the few games that justified my having a PS2 in 2002.

2003: This year will forever be best known for the release of Lowrider, a game about a strange American subculture as filtered through the lens of a strange Japanese videogame company that might have never experienced any actual lowriders directly. Needless to say, it comes highly recommended.

2008: Zenkoku Dekotora Matsuri, the most recent Jaleco game of note, is released in Japan. It brings the crazy but completely awesome Japanese niche culture of “decoration trucks” to the Wii, and marks a fitting end cap for the history of the bizarre company.

Related Links:

Japan Scares Me: Final Fantasy VII's Tifa in Tifatan X
Japan Scares Me: To Love-Ru - Exciting Outdoor School Version
Japan Scares Me: Tokyo Game Show Rising, Strangeness, and Panty-shot Beat ‘Em Ups

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Posted Jan 20 2009, 11:00 AM

Filed under: joe keiser, bases loaded, carrier, closure, lowrider, jaleco, whomp 'em, stepping selection

Comments

Derrick Sanskrit said:

I was literally just playing The Peace Keepers last night (actually, at 2am, so this morning). My goodness is that game hilariously bad, though I did LOVE that you could customize the color palette of any sprite you wanted.

January 20, 2009 3:10 PM

LBD "Nytetrayn" said:

I'm going to miss Jaleco, simply for its presence. I ought to give their NES game, Shatterhand, a try sometime. Maybe it'll make it to Virtual Console?

For that matter, I've always been curious about City Connection. Maybe I'll get that as my form of pouring one over my shoulder, or whatever it is you're supposed to do at a time like this.

January 21, 2009 1:02 AM

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

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Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

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