Founded 1992 · Tokyo, Japan · Founders: Masato Maegawa · First game: Gunstar Heroes (1993)
Founded by Konami veterans exhausted by endless sequels, Treasure built a reputation as the finest action-game studio in the world — small, uncompromising, and technically fearless.
Treasure was founded on 19 June 1992, its name chosen from the ambition of becoming a "treasure" to the industry. Its founder and president, Masato Maegawa, had learned programming in junior high school, studied it in college, and joined Konami on graduation. There he and the colleagues who would follow him worked on an extraordinary run of games: the arcade titles The Simpsons (1991) and Bucky O'Hare (1992), and on the Super NES, Super Castlevania IV (1991), Contra III: The Alien Wars (1992), and Axelay (1992). The break came from frustration. In 1991 Maegawa and several Konami colleagues began planning an original game — the project that would become Gunstar Heroes — and Konami rejected the concept. The team had grown increasingly weary of the company's reliance on sequels to established franchises like Castlevania and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the rejection crystallised their decision to leave. Just over ten people founded Treasure with the explicit purpose of making original games. Their first act was a statement of principle. Although nearly all the staff had built their careers on the Super NES at Konami, they chose to develop Gunstar Heroes (1993) for the Sega Genesis, because the Genesis's Motorola 68000 processor was necessary for the visual density and speed they wanted. It was a decision made on purely technical grounds, in defiance of their own experience, and it produced one of the most explosively inventive action games ever made. What followed was a catalogue of remarkable consistency and restlessness: Dynamite Headdy, Alien Soldier, Guardian Heroes, Mischief Makers, Sin and Punishment, and — most revered of all — the shoot-'em-ups Radiant Silvergun (1998) and Ikaruga (2001), games of such depth and difficulty that they remain benchmarks of the genre. Treasure never grew large, never chased mass-market trends, and never abandoned its founding premise. It is the definitive example of a small studio surviving on craft alone.
Treasure exists because Konami said no. In 1991 Masato Maegawa and several colleagues — veterans of Super Castlevania IV, Contra III, and Axelay — proposed an original game and were turned down, at a moment when the team was already chafing at the company's dependence on sequels to Castlevania, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and other established properties. The rejected concept became Gunstar Heroes, and rather than abandon it, the group left to found their own studio in June 1992 with a little over ten people. The name they chose reflected the ambition: to be a treasure to an industry they felt was becoming complacent.
Treasure's defining trait was a willingness to follow the technology rather than the safe path. Despite the fact that nearly all its staff had built their careers making Super NES games at Konami, the studio developed Gunstar Heroes for the Sega Genesis, because that machine's Motorola 68000 processor was the one capable of the visual density and speed the design demanded. That instinct — to choose whatever hardware would let the idea work, and to push it further than anyone thought reasonable — ran through everything that followed, from Alien Soldier and Guardian Heroes to the revered shoot-'em-ups Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga. Treasure stayed small, stayed original, and became one of the most respected studios in the medium on craft alone.