【PACK-IN-VIDEO】 A game developer that once existed! What is the trajectory of PACK-IN-VIDEO, which has now been absorbed and merged into Marvelous Interactive?

When hearing “Pack-In-Video,” many people might have the impression of a game developer, but when tracing its history, you can see that it was actually a slightly unusual company that started from the video industry. Established in 1970 with investments from Victor Company of Japan, Tokyo Broadcasting System, and many other influential companies, this company was initially aimed at producing and selling video software rather than games. Since home video equipment was not yet widely popular and the environment for selling video software was far from sufficient at the time, their journey of working on film distribution and other ventures while assessing market changes was truly a succession of challenges. It feels as if the experience accumulated precisely because of that era was greatly utilized in their subsequent business development.

As home video decks and video discs gradually began to spread to general households, Pack-In-Video put its video production business into full swing and sent many video works out into the world. Their track record of selling TV programs and planned works produced by TBS and Gakken for many years tells the story of an existence that supported Japan's video software market. Then, in the late 1980s, amid the rapid excitement in the home video game market, they advanced into the development and sales of game software for the Family Computer. The idea of linking the planning and expressive power cultivated in video production with new entertainment was surely a challenge that could only be realized by a company that continuously evolved with the times without fearing change.

In 1994, considering profitability, they made the bold decision to withdraw from the video production and sales business and the film distribution business that they had worked on for many years, in order to concentrate management resources on the game software business. Moving away from the business that could be called the company's origin must not have been easy, but that choice established a system to pour more strength into game development. The flexibility of continuing to choose the optimal direction every time the market environment changed seems to have been a great strength of this company. Rather than clinging to achievements accumulated in the past, the stance of stepping forward into new possibilities is likely one of the reasons they continued to show a presence in the industry for a long time.

After that, through integration with the interactive division of Victor Entertainment, they changed their company name to “Victor Interactive Software,” and further became a group company of Marvelous Entertainment to begin a new history as “Marvelous Interactive.” Then, in 2007, they were absorbed and merged into Marvelous Entertainment, ending their role as an independent company. However, even if the company name and organization changed, the technology and development know-how cultivated there have been firmly passed down to the new structure. Even though it closed its curtains as a single company, the impact that its journey left on the Japanese game industry is by no means small.

The appeal of Pack-In-Video cannot be fully described in a single word as a company that produced game software. Starting business from an era when video culture was still developing, they supported the growth of the video software market, and afterwards, while repeating new challenges along with the expansion of the home video game market, they continued to watch the changes in the Japanese entertainment industry from the front lines. The judgment to flexibly change businesses in line with the times and the stance of continuing to challenge new fields can be called an individuality that many companies do not possess. Although opportunities to see that company name have decreased now, it is without a doubt an existence that must still not be forgotten when looking back at the history of Japanese games and videos.