【Bullet-Proof Software】Commonly known as BPS! What is the history of Bullet-Proof Software, founded by Edward S.P. Rogers who was involved in the development and porting of Tetris?

If asked “Do you know what kind of company it is when you hear BPS?”, people who can answer immediately might be considerable game lovers. Bullet-Proof Software, Inc. was a game software development company formerly active in Japan, and an indispensable work when talking about its name is “Tetris”. However, the interest of this company is not only that it handled famous titles. The English company name “Bullet-Proof” has not only the meaning of “bulletproof”, but also the nuance of “perfect”, and from that it was named as a company aiming for “perfect software”. As a game company, isn't it quite a bold and confidence-filled name? Note that although it is a separate corporate entity from Blue Planet Software in the United States, both have the commonality of being companies founded by Henk Brouwer Rogers.

BPS was born in 1983. It was a computer game maker founded by Rogers in Yokohama City. Tracing its starting point leads to a work called “The Black Onyx”. Rogers originally planned to release this game from Koei, but was advised by Koei's president to establish a company, and set up BPS with Conrad Tatsuya Ozawa, a friend from his university days at the University of Hawaii. It started as a limited liability company at first, and subsequently transitioned to a joint-stock company. Rogers served as president and Ozawa as vice president. The point to keep in mind here is that Ozawa was not a person who co-developed games with Rogers, but supported the development. Knowing such background brings into view that BPS was not a company created simply to sell works, but an organization born to turn creators' challenges into real business.

Some people might think, “But in the end, isn't BPS a Tetris company?”. Certainly “Tetris” is an existence symbolizing the company, and it expanded multiple Tetris-related titles. However, explaining it with only that is a bit wasteful. In addition to handling “Hatris”, BPS also released early works of the “Shutokou Battle” series. A puzzle game generating depth from simple rules, and a unique racing game set on the Shuto Expressway. At a glance, they are completely different genres, but both have a game-like charm where “once you start playing, you want to repeat it”. Not shutting itself in only specific genres, but releasing different ways of play into the world, one feels flexibility unique to BPS as well.

An end comes to such BPS as well. Announcing dissolution on February 22, 2001, ending operations on the 28th of the same month, the company dissolved as of March 31. However, what is interesting starts from here. Even if the company itself disappeared, works and intellectual properties were inherited by new places respectively. The “Tetris” series and “Hatris” released by the company went to The Tetris Company, which Rogers was involved in establishing. The “Shutokou Battle” series went to Genki, the developer and current publisher, and titles other than those were transferred to Blue Planet Software. In other words, the history of BPS was not completely cut off by the dissolution of the company. Things created, nurtured, and released into the world passed to other companies, connecting to the game culture beyond that.

The greatest charm felt looking back at BPS would be that “the impact on game history cannot be measured by company scale or survival period alone”. A single company starting in Yokohama in 1983 walked with “The Black Onyx” as a starting point, deeply involved with the global game “Tetris”, and further released up to early works of “Shutokou Battle”. In that career, there is excitement unique to the era when Japan's game industry was growing greatly. BPS raised the ambition “perfect software” in its name. While the company no longer exists, playing remaining titles or tracing its history allows you to still feel the challenging spirit of those days. The more you know, the more you do not want to end it with just a single word “a Tetris company”—precisely that is the deep charm of the game company named BPS.