Topic: Why did Kemco change its style?

In the 90s, I was a fan of this low-profile developer. I liked their risky philosophy of putting games on the table that other companies wouldn't dare to make. Adapting the Mac Ventures series, even though its own original programmers didn't have faith in it, was their first real test. Then came games like Crazy Castle, Rescue: The Embassy Mission, Dessert Commander, and Spy vs. Spy. Later, they surprised us on the SNES with the Top Gear franchise (a franchise I don't understand why they decided to abandon and why they were never sued by the producers of the show of the same name, but it was still a successful series) and games like Phalanx, First Samurai, X-Zone, and Drakken. On the N64, they surprised me with the sequel to Shadowgate and the Top Gear games, now in 3D. However, during the GameCube/PS2 era, they never released a racing game and squandered a golden opportunity with the mediocre Batman game, Dark Tomorrow.

The thing is, the current Kemco seems to be following the same path as Square Enix or Atlus, specializing only in low-budget, generic-looking RPGs. In my opinion, this gives the impression that the company betrayed itself and lost sight of its old philosophy, unlike Sunsoft, which, when it returned a couple of years ago, brought back its past glories, releasing previously unreleased games that hadn't been launched anywhere else in the world, and even announcing sequels, like the Blaster Master trilogy, Mr. Gimmick 2, and Ufouria 2 with updated graphics.

I miss the old Kemco.

P.S.: I wasn't sure whether to post this in the General section or here.

I am assuming like most companies the upper management's vision changed so did the company's. Since they are a Japanese based company, they US branch closed down years ago they are going to do what sells.best in their country, mobile games.

Eh, looking at their wikipedia page, it seems making tons of low-budget RPGs, mostly for mobile platforms, started a long time ago. . . and seems to have saved the company. Absent that new direction, they almost certainly would have gone bankrupt 20 years ago. They didn't wind down making other more "substantial" games in respond to the success of shovelware RPGs- the RPGs came after they were already almost no longer making games.

I suspect they were basically yet another victim of the early 2000s contraction of the middle market. They just found a market niche that allowed them to survive, rather than being yet another name only existing in the IP catalog of a company like Square-Enix.

I admit to not really noticing kemco before their retro rpg era. But they have quite a few very tempting games. They tend to look better than they actually are, but they're often cheap and I'm happy they exist.

Yeah, it's an usual path for a long established publisher to take. Most either went AAA or went broke trying, but they managed to find enough of an audience to keep themselves going in that mid-budget niche.

I suspect that a lot of those older series died a death because they were developed by external studios who either broke up or threw in their lot with different publishers. In terms of what they actually make in-house, they've changed a lot less.

I wonder if they will continue to make Switch 2 editions of their catalogue; they have been trickling them out this year. Most of those games really don't seem like they need Switch 2 editions so I assume it is mostly for advertising purposes.

I'm going to be honest, I've never heard of Kemco before. None of their IPs seem to be super well-known (I guuuueeesss Top Gear sounds familiar, but I may just be confusing it with Top Gun) and I'm not sure they've been super big sellers and may have gotten squeezed out by larger sellers. That may be why, they just didn't stand out in a crowded field.