Expansion and arcade success
In 1983, the company moved its headquarters to a new building in Ogikubo, Suginami, where it stayed for the remaining of its lifespan.[14] In March 1985, Data East Europe was established in London.[8] Data East continued to release arcade video games over the next 15 years following the video game crash of 1983.
Data East distributed three major arcade hits in North America between 1984 and 1985: the fighting game Karate Champ (1984), the beat 'em up title Kung-Fu Master (1984), and the run and gun video game Commando (1985). These three titles catapulted Data East to the forefront of the amusement arcade industry in the mid-1980s.[15][16] Karate Champ, Kung-Fu Master and Commando were the top three highest-grossing arcade games of 1985 in the United States.[17] Karate Champ was the first successful fighting game, and one of the most influential to modern fighting game standards. Some of Data East's other most famous coin-op arcade games from its 1980s heyday include Heavy Barrel, Bad Dudes Vs. DragonNinja, Sly Spy, RoboCop, Bump 'n' Jump, Trio the Punch, Karnov and Atomic Runner Chelnov.
Data East also purchased licenses to manufacture and sell arcade games created by other companies. Some of its licensed games included Kid Niki: Radical Ninja, Kung Fu Master and Vigilante, all licensed from Irem, and Commando, licensed from Capcom. It had a brief stint as a Neo Geo arcade licensee in the mid-1990s, starting with Spinmaster and co-published with SNK.
Home consoles
Following its arcade success, Data East made a successful entry in the home computer game market with a 1985 port of Karate Champ, which became the first home computer game to sell more than 500,000 copies in the United States by January 1989.[18][19] It became the subject of the litigation Data East USA, Inc. v. Epyx, Inc., in which Data East alleged that the computer game International Karate (1985), published by Epyx, infringed the copyright of Karate Champ.
Data East entered the video game console market in 1986 with the release of B-Wings for the Famicom.[2] In North America, the subsidiary Data East USA was the first licensee announced for the Nintendo Entertainment System[20] and consequently was one of the four original third-party publishers to release games for the console in late 1986.[21]
Data East Pinball
Data East Pinball was formed as a subsidiary of Data East USA,[23] and manufactured pinball machines from 1987 through to 1994.[24] These included innovations such as the first pinball to have stereo sound (Laser War), the first usage of a small dot-matrix display in Checkpoint along with the first usage of a big DMD (192x64) in Maverick. In designing pinball machines it showed a strong preference for using high-profile (but expensive) licensed properties, rather than creating totally original machines, which did not help the financial difficulties the company began experiencing from 1990 on. Some of the properties that Data East licensed for its pinball machines included Guns N' Roses, Star Wars, Back to the Future, Batman, RoboCop, The Simpsons, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Data East is the only company that manufactured custom pinball games (e.g., for Aaron Spelling, the movie Richie Rich, or Michael Jordan), though these were basically mods of existing or soon to be released pinball machines (e.g., Lethal Weapon 3).
Amidst plummeting sales across the entire pinball market, Data East chose to exit the pinball business and sold the factory to Sega
Non-gaming
Although video games represented the majority of the company's revenue, Data East had always been involved in engineering. Outside of video games, Data East produced image transmission equipment, data communication adapters for satellite phones from NTT DoCoMo, and developed electrocardiogram equipment for ambulances. According to the company's website, its Datafax product, released in 1983, was the world's first portable fax machine.[26]
Bankruptcy
By the end of the 1990s, the company's American division, Data East USA, was liquidated. No official announcement of this was made; instead, calls to Data East USA's offices were greeted with a prerecorded message from marketing manager Jay Malpas stating that the company had closed its doors before Christmas 1996.[27] Its final releases were Defcon 5 and Creature Shock: Special Edition.[27] The Japanese parent company itself announced its departure from the arcade industry entirely on December 4, 1997,[28] and had accumulated a debt estimated at 3.3 billion yen. Data East filed for reorganization in 1999 and stopped making video games altogether.[29][30] All customer support pertaining to video games was halted in March 2000.[31]
