TOSE

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Tose
Tose Software.png
Founded 1979
Headquarters Kyoto, Japan
Other Names
  • TOSE Software
  • Dongxing

Tose (株式会社トーセ Tose Co., Ltd.) is a Japanese game developer that was named after Toa Seiko. The company has been developing video games ever since the early 80's, and have many offices ranging from the United States to China. The company has gained a reputation for not giving credit to either themselves or their development team. The Vice President of Tose's US division, Masa Agarida said that TOSE's intention is to be secretive. Their policy isn't to have a vision, but to follow visions of the customers. Now they credit themselves and use real names of their staff, most of the time. TOSE may have been secretive to prevent their staff from leaving the company for another game developer, as the employees who left wouldn't be able to prove to another game company that they worked on a game because their name isn't in it. Some of TOSE's main publishers during their NES development included Bandai and Jaleco. They started using real names and showed their name on the Game & Watch Gallery games for the Game Boy. Some of TOSE's notable games include Tetris 2, Starfy, and the Bases Loaded series.

During their SNES development, the company was a bit better about game credits; they'd usually put credits in their Japanese releases but then remove them when released in the USA or Europe. Such examples include Super Goal!, Super Goal! Two, and some of the Dragon Ball Z games. Even then, some of their SNES titles did not have credits at all such as Tetris 2.

TOSE continues to develop games to this day for a variety of consoles. They also have 6 studios in Kyoto, 1 in Tokyo, 2 in China, and many more. In China, the company is known as Dongxing (东星 Eastern Star).


Games


Music Development

NES

The music was written in assembly on a Family BASIC. It is unknown who programmed the sound engine. Because of the secrecy of the company, the developers who know are not allowed to say who it is.

SNES

According to Mitsuhiko Takano, the composers at TOSE used software called かんきちくん (Kankichi-kun) to create the music and TACOS for the instrument samples. The instruments were taken from many different keyboards including the Korg M1, Yamaha SY22, and more.

A person who went by fish names appeared to be the programmer of the sound driver. One of the aliases is "Anchovy".

Audio Personnel

Because of the secrecy of the company, any TOSE titles that did happen to have a credits scroll, most of them list the game developers under aliases, some of which are very hard to decipher.

Links