Gaijinworks is an American company that publishes video games. It was started by Victor Ireland in July 2006, shortly after another company called Working Designs closed in December 2005. Ireland was the leader of Working Designs. The name "Gaijinworks" includes the Japanese word "gaijin," which means "foreigner." The company continued the work started by Working Designs, which was to translate and make available for American players Japanese video games that were not widely known. The company was not active for the first three years after it was founded. Its first project was announced in March 2009, when it began making a game called Miami Law by Hudson Soft for the Nintendo DS. There has been no new game released by Gaijinworks since 2017.
Company history
In December 2005, Victor Ireland, president of video game publisher Working Designs, announced on the company’s website that they would close their business. This decision followed disagreements with Sony Computer Entertainment and the inability to obtain permission to release games for Sony’s PlayStation 2 console, such as Bōken Jidai Katsugeki Goemon. The announcement came one year after the company released its last game in North America, Growlanser Generations, in December 2004. Ireland said this game hurt the company’s success because Sony forced them to combine two separate projects, which increased production costs and reduced profits. Despite this, Ireland said he wanted to continue working in the game industry and began talks with Microsoft to help localize role-playing games for their Xbox 360 console.
Seven months later, in July 2006, Ireland announced the creation of a new company called "Gaijinworks," which would continue Working Designs’ legacy and have Ireland as its head translator. He said "game related news" would follow in the next summer, with the official website launching later that year. However, details about the company’s activities were unclear for three years. In January 2009, Ireland told 1UP.com that "game related news" would soon be shared, though it would not include the company’s most well-known games. In March 2009, Gaijinworks announced its first project since starting: localizing Miami Law, a crime-based adventure game by Hudson Soft for the Nintendo DS. Ireland worked closely with Hudson’s team, including taking them on a tour of an American city to help with development.
Gaijinworks later partnered with Sunsoft to release Blaster Master on the North American Virtual Console service and the WiiWare remake Blaster Master: Overdrive. After this partnership, Gaijinworks worked with MonkeyPaw Games to release Vanguard Bandits on the PlayStation Store as part of the PSone Classics line. The company also digitally released other PlayStation 1 classics originally published by Working Designs, such as Arc the Lad Collection and Alundra. Victor Ireland has mentioned that he is working to add Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete to the PlayStation Network.