Tumiki Fighters

ABA Games

Industry	Video games development
Headquarters	Tokyo, Japan
Key people	Kenta Cho
Number of employees	1
Website	http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/index_e.html

ABA Games is a Japanese video game developer, composed solely of game designer Kenta Cho. ABA Games' works, available as open source freeware, are predominantly shoot 'em up games often inspired by classic games in the genre. Its games feature stylised retro graphics, innovative gameplay features and modes and are set in random rather than scripted events. These creations have been acclaimed as some of the best and well-known independent games available, though some commentators, including Cho himself, feel they are too simple for commercial release.

Cho began creating computer games as a hobby during his childhood in the 1980s. After leaving university, he pursued a career with Toshiba in multimedia research and development while continuing to develop games in his spare time. The positive reaction to ABA Games' first shoot 'em up, Noiz2sa (2002), encouraged him to concentrate on that genre. The developer's games have been ported from the original Windows versions to macOS and Linux, and various handheld devices. One of its games, Tumiki Fighters, was remade, built upon and released for the Wii console as Blast Works. According to Cho, he occasionally receives interest in further console ports. In addition to Tumiki Fighters, acclaimed ABA Games titles include Gunroar, rRootage and Torus Trooper.

ABA Games' sole developer, Kenta Cho, began writing games as a child during the 1980s using the NEC PC-6001 microcomputer, as there were few commercially available games. After leaving university, Cho contemplated professional games development but ultimately instead joined Toshiba to work in multimedia research and development. He continues to work full-time for Toshiba while running ABA Games as a hobby, working mainly on weekends. Cho is the sole contributor to ABA Games. Lacking musical training, he creates the soundtracks to his games using commercially available, pre-made samples. ABA Games releases a game approximately every six months, with the first three months spent creating prototypes and the latter three spent refining a finished version.