Arika is a Japanese video game developer and publisher. It was formed in 1995 by former Capcom employees, originally as ARMtech K.K, later named Arika. The name of the company is the reverse of the name of the company's founder, Akira Nishitani, who along with Akira Yasuda, created Street Fighter II. Arika's first arcade game was Street Fighter EX. It was successful and was followed up with two updates, and two sequels in arcades, on PlayStation and PlayStation 2. In 2018, they released a PlayStation 4spiritual successor to both Street Fighter EX and the arcade only game Fighting Layer, called Fighting EX Layer. In 2019, Arika collaborated with Nintendo to create Tetris 99. Arika is also known for the series, Dr. Mario series, and Endless Ocean series.
History
Arika was founded in November 1995. During the first month of its existence the company was focused strictly on research. In July 2011, a video from an Arika 3DS test project, called Fighting Sample, was released, featuring Hokuto and Kairi from the Street Fighter EX series. Further screenshots were released, showing characters Blair, Doctrine Dark and Shadow Geist, but the project was later cancelled. Later in May 2016, another video showcasing Nanase, Allen, Darun and Skullomania was released as a sample test video, with no plans for a future release. In April 2017, Fighting EX Layer, which seems to be the "evolution" of Fighting Sample was announced as a video for April Fools, and later confirmed to be actually a game in development. Fighting EX Layer is a spiritual successor to both Street Fighter EX series and Fighting Layer, an arcade-only fighting game by Arika. Tetris: The Grand Master 4: Masters of Round has been shown to be in development multiple times since as early as 2009. However, it was cancelled later on due to various reasons, including copyright infringements with regards to emulation and various fan-developed clones of TGM, most notably Texmaster2009. TGM4 has been uncancelled again recently; The Grand Master 2015 was announced and playtested in both Japan and the United States in June 2015. This playtest was not licensed by The Tetris Company. Not long after completion, a Tetris the Absolute: The Grand Master 2 PLUS port to the PlayStation 2 was shown to be in development. Due to unknown reasons, the port was not licensed and was never released.
