Taito

A lightening bolt shoots across the button beneath a giant number one with sticker of the company name on an off-center gray circle and blue background, semi-circular black text at bottom.

The Taito Corporation was a Japanese publisher of video games that began operation in 1953. Some of Taito’s most well known productions were the arcade games Space Invaders and Bubble Bobble. The Taito Trading Company was founded by Michael Kogan, a Russian Jewish businessman, who initially distributed vending machines and jukeboxes. In 1973, Taito introduced their first video arcade game and renamed the company the Taito Corporation. It wasn't until 1978 that an arcade game called Space Invaders was introduced and the company became extremely successful. The company continued to produce through the 1990s, eventually creating a CD-ROM based console in 1992, which allowed users to play some of the arcade games and download games from a satellite transmission. The console, named WOWOW, was never released. In 2005, the Taito Corporation was purchased by Square Equinox who, in October of 2008, liquidated the company.