Gaijinworks is an American company that publishes video games. It was started in July 2006 by Victor Ireland. The company was created soon after Working Designs ended in December 2005. Ireland was the president of Working Designs at that time. The name "Gaijinworks" includes the Japanese word "gaijin," which means "foreigner." The company continued the work of Working Designs by translating and adapting less popular Japanese games for American players. It also worked closely with the original game creators. For the first three years, the company was not active. Its first project was announced in March 2009: a game called Miami Law by Hudson Soft for the Nintendo DS. There has been no new release from Gaijinworks since 2017.
Company history
In December 2005, Victor Ireland, president of video game publisher Working Designs, shared on the company's website that they would close their business because of disagreements with Sony Computer Entertainment and because they could not get permission to release games on Sony's PlayStation 2 console, such as Bōken Jidai Katsugeki Goemon. This announcement came one year after the company released their last game in North America, Growlanser Generations, in December 2004. Ireland said that the game "wounded [us]" because Sony forced the company to combine two separate projects, which increased costs by two times and cut profits in half. Although Ireland said he wanted to stay in the game industry, he began talking with Microsoft to work with former employees to translate role-playing games for their Xbox 360 console.
In July 2006, seven months later, Ireland announced the start of a new company called "Gaijinworks," which would continue the work of Working Designs, with Ireland as the head translator. He said "game related news" would follow in the next summer, and the official website would launch in late summer or fall. However, information about the company's activities was hard to find for three years. This changed in January 2009, when Ireland told 1UP.com that "game related news" would come in the following months, though it would not be one of the main games they were known for. In March 2009, Gaijinworks announced their first project since starting: translating 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 and the WiiWare remake Blaster Master: Overdrive. After this, they partnered with MonkeyPaw Games to release Vanguard Bandits on the PlayStation Store as part of the PSone Classics line. Gaijinworks also released digitally other PlayStation 1 games 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.