Chatnoir
| Chat Noir | |
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| Founded | 1983-07-?? |
| Headquarters | Japan |
Chatnoir (also known as Chat Noir) (㈱シャノアール) was a Japanese game developer. It was founded by Akitsugu Taguchi (田口昭次) in July of 1983. They were known for their large amount of Mahjong video games. They would sometimes work with companies such as Koei and Sunsoft. Despite the company being Japanese, the name of the company was French for "Black Cat".
The company went defunct around the early 2000s.
Most of the company's games lacked credits for unknown reasons, so it's hard to pinpoint exactly which games were done by which composers. However, as stated below, the only composer to receive credit in their games was Tomomi Hatakeyama, and Masaki Komatsu receiving a sound programming credit in one game.
Audio Development
NES
Akitsugu Taguchi programmed the sound driver. Keita Mizukami reprogrammed the driver to support the MMC5 for the game Yakuman Tengoku. The driver used a custom MML and music was entered on a PC-9801. Koei also used the driver.
SNES
For Mahjong Gokuu Tenjiku, the company used their own variant of Opus's SQ & DBOOT sound driver. Lemmings uses a custom variant of Nintendo's Kankichi-kun software, reprogrammed by Masaki Komatsu.
Games
Audio Personnel
Note: Because most Chatnoir games lacked credits, it's hard to tell all the audio staff who worked for the company. These people were only credited in the handful of their games that had credits.
- Hidechan (Under contract from Sunsoft. Credited for sound programming in Mahjong Gokuu Special (PCE))
- Keita Mizukami - Sound programmer for Yakuman Tengoku (FC).
- Masaki Komatsu (Sound programmer for Lemmings (SNES))
- Tomomi Hatakeyama (Composer; 1990-1994)
- Yukichan (Under contract from Sunsoft. Credited for sound programming in Mahjong Gokuu Special (PCE))
The games Mahjong Taikai and Super Mahjong Taikai use themes from many Koei games, as many characters from their games make an appearance. As a result, the game was composed by many Yoko Kanno, Akira Ishiguro, and Minoru Mukaiya, but arranged by a Chatnoir employee, likely Hatakeyama.
