Public | |
Founded | June 19, 1995 |
Headquarters | Tokyo, Japan |
Key people
|
Yan Qiu (NA President) |
Revenue | 10,000,000 yen (as of April 2015) |
Number of employees
|
65 (as of April 2015) |
Website |
www.syn-sophia.co.jp www.aki-usa.com |
Syn Sophia, Inc., formerly AKI Corporation and The Man Breeze, is an independent video game development studio located in Kichijōji, Tokyo, Japan founded on June 19, 1995. The company is most well known for its popular wrestling games in the late 1990s and early-mid-2000s, starting with the release of Virtual Pro-Wrestling in 1996. The title was the first entry in the Virtual Pro Wrestling series.
The company's take on World Championship Wrestling proved successful in the late 1990s with the release of several games, culminating in WCW/nWo Revenge for the Nintendo 64. As a result, the World Wrestling Federation ended their twelve-year relationship with Acclaim Entertainment and partnered with THQ/AKI in 1999. The relationship would continue AKI's reputation for quality wrestling games, which ended with the release of WWF No Mercy.
The company went public in 1998 and on April 1, 2007 was renamed Syn Sophia, Inc. The first game developed under that name was Ganbaru Watashi no Kakei Diary for the Nintendo DS in 2007. However, they used their previous name in some of their future titles until 2008 with the release of Style Savvy for the Nintendo DS. Ready 2 Rumble: Revolution would be developed under the name AKI Corporation USA.
A version of WWF No Mercy for the Game Boy Color was in the works and planned for release alongside the Nintendo 64 version. The game was originally planned to utilize the Nintendo 64 Transfer Pak accessory to unlock special content in each version of the game. This feature was later scrapped, however, with the extra content in each version instead being unlocked via gameplay. After further developmental woes, the game was shifted to Natsume, developers of the previous WWF game for Game Boy Color, before finally being canceled in late December 2000. Screenshots of this game at one point existed, but the websites which had them up were forced to remove them following the game's cancellation.