Industry Video game Defunct 1992 Owner Konami of America Ceased operations 1992 | Fate Dissolved Products Video games Founded 1988 Parent organization Konami | |
Former type Shell subsidiary of Konami Headquarters Buffalo Grove, Illinois, United States | ||
History of ultra games
Ultra Software Corporation was a shell corporation and publishing label created in 1988 as a subsidiary of Konami of America, in an effort to get around Nintendo of America's strict licensing rules for the North American Konami releases of games for Nintendo consoles. One of these rules was that a third-party company could only publish up to five games per year for the Nintendo Entertainment System in the US. This was hardly convenient for Konami, which had begun releasing more than ten games a year for both the Family Computer and Family Computer Disk System in Japan. With a greater library than they were allowed to localize, Konami formed the Ultra Games brand to extend their annual library to ten games a year.
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Ultra's first game was the NES version of Metal Gear. At first, Ultra was dedicated to localizing Konami's pre-existing software from Japan, but later it began publishing works from other companies as well. Some of Konami's most notable games released under the Ultra label include Operation C (an original Game Boy installment of the Contra series), Snake's Revenge (a sequel to the original Metal Gear) and the first few Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games for the NES and Game Boy.
After the North American launch of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo became less strict on the number of games third parties could publish. As a result, Ultra Games began losing its purpose and Konami dropped the label in 1992.
In Europe, Konami established the Palcom Software Limited subsidiary for similar purposes. Its library was similar to Ultra's but the company also published games that were not released in America, notably Road Fighter, Parodius, Crackout, and Pop'n Twinbee. Palcom also released SNES games that were published in America by Konami itself. The European subsidiary lasted longer than Ultra Games, until it was closed down in early 1994.