Game Park | |
Hangul | 게임파크 |
---|---|
Revised Romanization | Geim Pakeu |
McCune–Reischauer | Keim P'ak'ŭ |
Game Park was a South Korean company that was founded in 1996 and went bankrupt in March 2007. It is responsible for creating the GP32 and the never-released XGP. GamePark Holdings was founded by former employees of Game Park in 2005.
Founded in 1996 in South Korea, Game Park entered the industry using government money. At the time, games in Korea were only made for PCs and Arcade. There was a law established after World War II that forbid importation of Japanese electronics. Some clones of Japanese consoles such as the Sega Saturn (cloned by Samsung) and Nintendo 64 (cloned by Hyundai) were holders of minor market shares. In a place where most games ran on the PC, a small place resided for video game consoles. To make changes, the South Korean government decided to fund a company that would create a console to compete against the monopolized Japanese market. A contest was held and Game Park was the winning company. Game Park was set to create the first portable video game system from Korea.
The GP32 (Game Park 32-bit), their first system, was then being designed. Several iterations of it were developed, including a metallic look, and a style issued from the original Game Boy design, and a flat panel with a screen on the upper part and buttons on the lower part. Those systems were shown at the 2000 Tokyo Game Show but failed to catch attention with their inferior hardware and games. After five years of development, Game Park opted for a more plastic look, a lot like the Game Boy Advance. Game Park's new handheld also had a major internal hardware upgrade making it more powerful than the GBA. The age limit of the game is 10 and over