AlphaDream

AlphaDream Corporation, Ltd. (株式会社アルファドリーム) was a Japanese video game developer based in Tokyo. It was founded in 2000 by Square alumni Chihiro Fujioka and Tetsuo Mizuno. Closely associated with Nintendo throughout its existence, it is best known for developing the Mario & Luigi series. On October 1, 2019, AlphaDream was shut down after filing for bankruptcy.

History

AlphaDream was a spinoff company from AlphaStar, (株式会社アルファスター) a staffing agency that dealt in construction work also known as Mente Tomo and Ai. (株式会社メンテ友アンド愛) Chihiro Fujioka joined AlphaStar in 1999 to head up a video game production division.[4] He and Tetsuo Mizuno spun the company off as AlphaStar Software on January 12, 2000, before renaming it to AlphaDream in July of that year.[4][5][6] Several members of their staff had previously worked at Square, including Mizuno, Square's second president, and Fujioka and Yoshihiko Maekawa, who were game directors at Square.[4] The name AlphaDream, meaning the 'first dream', is a play on Final Fantasy, Square's most notable series.[4]

The company was known for their role-playing games, most notably the Mario & Luigi series for the Game Boy Advance, the Nintendo DS and the Nintendo 3DS. Their first game, Koto Battle, is a Pokémon-style role-playing game, wherein the player battles three of their twenty character cards against AI opponents. It was released in March 2001 for the Game Boy Color. While it remains a Japan-only game, it was later re-released for the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console.

AlphaDream's next game was Tomato Adventure, released in January 2002. The player, as DeMille, a tomato-hater in the Ketchup Kingdom, fights his way from his outcast village to rescue his girlfriend. The in-game weapons are toy-like and the battles against opponents involve minigames.

Tomato Adventure was co-developed with Graphic Research and directed by Chihiro Fujioka of Super Mario RPG and Final Fantasy Legend III. It was expected for release on the Game Boy Color as Gimmick Land, but was pushed to the new Game Boy Advance and renamed for better marketing. Tomato Adventure has not been released outside Japan.

AlphaDream became the developer of the Mario & Luigi series of games shortly after, with the first entry in the series, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, releasing in 2003.

On October 1, 2019, AlphaDream declared bankruptcy, citing sluggish revenues and high development costs, and being unable to keep up with growing debt (which as of March 2018 was over ¥465 million).[7]

Following the closure of AlphaDream, most of the developers who worked for the company, including Chihiro Fujioka, Yoshihiko Maekawa, and Akira Otani, who had originally been involved in previous Mario & Luigi games, then returned for the development of Mario & Luigi: Brothership, with Acquire as the lead developer.[8]

Games

External links