TOSE

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Tose
Tose Software.png
Founded 1979
Headquarters Kyoto, Japan
Other Names
  • TOSE Software
  • Dongxing

Tose (株式会社トーセ Tose Co., Ltd., pronounced Toe Say) is a Japanese game developer that was named after Toa Seiko (株式会社東亜セイコー). The company has been developing video games ever since the early 80's, and have many offices ranging from the United States to China. The company has gained a reputation for not giving credit to either themselves or their development team. The Vice President of Tose's US division, Masa Agarida said that TOSE's intention is to be secretive. Their policy isn't to have a vision, but to follow visions of the customers. Now they credit themselves and use real names of their staff, most of the time. TOSE may have been secretive to prevent their staff from leaving the company for another game developer, as the employees who left wouldn't be able to prove to another game company that they worked on a game because their name isn't in it. Some of TOSE's main publishers during their NES development included Bandai and Jaleco. They started using real names and showed their name on the Game & Watch Gallery games for the Game Boy. Some of TOSE's notable games include Tetris 2, Starfy, and the Bases Loaded series.

During their SNES development, the company was a bit better about game credits; they'd usually put credits in their Japanese releases but then remove them when released in the USA or Europe. Such examples include Super Goal!, Super Goal! Two, and some of the Dragon Ball Z games. Even then, some of their SNES titles did not have credits at all such as Tetris 2.

TOSE's name was first mentioned in the credits of Game & Watch Gallery, and the company later put their name in The Legendary Stafy series.

TOSE continues to develop games to this day for a variety of consoles. They also have 6 studios in Kyoto, 1 in Tokyo, 2 in China, and many more. In China, the company is known as Dongxing (东星 = Eastern Star). In Japanese, it would be 東星.


Games

Music Development

Game Boy

The music was written on the Game Boy itself using a development system by TOSE.

NES

The music was written in assembly macros on a Family BASIC computer. It is unknown who programmed the sound engine. Because of the secrecy of the company, the developers who know are not allowed to say who it is. However, it is believed to be a woman named Toshiko Kawanishi, who was credited in Akira. Also, a female sound effect designer who went by the moniker Peru was credited in some early games. It is suspected, but unconfirmed whether these two female sound designers are the same person.

SNES

According to Mitsuhiko Takano, the composers at TOSE used Nintendo's music software called Kankichi-kun to create the music and TACOS for the instrument samples (though it is actually called Tako Sample). The instruments were taken from many different keyboards including the Korg M1, Yamaha SY22, and more.

A person who went by fish names appeared to be the programmer of the sound driver. One of the aliases is "Anchovy".

Later, TOSE programmed a second variant of the driver. Games that use this driver that list a sound programmer list a person who went by names like "Chatran" or "Chatoru", etc.

GEN

TOSE used the Z80 version of Sample Music Playback System. As a result, the composers most likely wrote in Z80 assembly using a PC-9801.

Game Boy Advance

The composers at TOSE used Nintendo's MP2K engine.

Nintendo DS

The composers at TOSE used Nintendo's Nitro Composer sound driver.

Audio Personnel

Because of the secrecy of the company, any TOSE titles that did happen to have a credits scroll, most of them list the game developers under aliases, some of which are very hard, if not impossible to decipher. On top of that, developers who do know the real names of these developers are under NDAs not to disclose names.

Links

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