Masaya Nakamura

Acquisition of Atari Japan By the early 1970s, Nakamura and his company had shifted away from mechanical amusement rides to coin-operated arcades games. Many of these were racing games that used electro-mechanical projection technology, such as Racer (1970), Formula-X (1975) and F-1 (1976). Atari Japan president Hideyuki Nakajima was then promoted as vice president of Nakamura Manufacturing. Nakamura would also open up a division in the United States as requested by Nakajima, Namco America, located a few blocks away from the Atari headquarters in Sunnyvale, California — Nakajima would become the president of the company. It was designed by one of Namco's new hires, Toru Iwatani, with Nakamura suggesting the game be named after the sound the character made while eating, "paku paku". In a 1983 interview, Nakamura said that he "never thought it would be this big". According to RePlay magazine, many considered Nakamura to be "the single most important person in coin-op" by 1990. Nakamura had also pushed Namco to be one of the first third-party developers for the Nintendo Family Computer, which was soaring in popularity.

In 1985, Warner Communications split Atari into two companies and sold off each of their shares. Manabe resigned in 1992 due to health problems, leading to Nakamura returning as his role of president until 2002.

Later years and death Nakamura became chairman of the Japan Amusement Machine and Marketing Association (JAMMA), and led Namco to begin construction and maintenance of large-scale amusement parks across Japan, Nakamura helped assist Tetsuya Takahashi with the formation of Japanese developer Monolith Soft in 1999, where Namco would publish their Xenosaga series. The same year on 1 April, Nakamura was appointed chairman of the Multimedia Content Development Association (MCDA). Following the unveil of the Xbox, Nakamura formed an alliance with Microsoft to produce games for the console, with Namco becoming one of the first Japanese developers to support it. Nakamura stepped down as CEO of Namco in 2002, taking on a ceremonial role in the company's management. and was one of the inaugural inductees in the International Video Game Hall of Fame in 2010 as one of the five video game pioneers, acknowledging his induction via a video feed. He was inducted alongside Pac-Man to coincide with the game's 30th anniversary. Nakamura died of Natural Causes on 22 January 2017, at the age of 91. The announcement was made a week later by Bandai Namco Holdings on 30 January, requesting respect for his family's privacy. His funeral was held privately, with a public memorial service planned by the company in the following weeks.