NEC

NEC is a Japanese electronics and IT company founded in 1899. In the 1980s and 1990s it was Japan’s leading personal computer maker: its PC-88 and PC-98 lines were the standard home and business computers in the country, and thousands of games were released for them, many never seen outside Japan.

With Hudson Soft, NEC also built the PC Engine, released in North America as the TurboGrafx-16. It was the first console with an optional CD-ROM drive and outsold the Famicom in Japan for a time. Its successor, the PC-FX, was a commercial failure and NEC left the console market soon after.