The company was founded on March 30th, 1998 in Suginami, Japan. Its founder, Suda, gave two reasons why he chose the name "Grasshopper:" the first being a reference to the song of the same name by UK band Ride, which he was listening to on repeat when forming the company. The second reason is that originally he wanted to use a Japanese word "battamon" as the company name. "Batta" means "grasshopper" and "mon" is "a thing" and when you put the words together, it means "copy or fake." However, he later changed his mind and stuck to Grasshopper instead. The word "Manufacture" was added in because his game company was about "building things." Grasshopper gained mainstream attention in 2005 for the GameCube and PlayStation 2 game killer7. In addition to killer7, they have developed ' and a number of Japan-only titles. Grasshopper Manufacture was also responsible for the Nintendo DS game Contact, the Wii gameNo More Heroes and its sequel ', and Shadows of the Damned. The company is headed by Goichi Suda, also known as Suda51, and is noted for its original and imaginative titles - ones that are also fraught with financial risk. Potential losses are often made up by the development of games based on popular anime franchises, such as ', ', and '. In May 2007, Suda announced during a speech at the 2007 Game Developers Conference that Grasshopper was at the time working on three titles for the Wii, two of which have now been released: No More Heroes and Fatal Frame IV. There is no information on the status of the third Wii game in development then. Grasshopper was said to be working on an Xbox 360 title, and have presented a concept for a PlayStation 3 game called Kurayami, a non-linear action adventure inspired by the worrying and confused universe of the Czech writer Franz Kafka, whom Goichi Suda admires. This was later cancelled and reincorporated ideas were put into the gameShadows of the Damned. In 2010, Yashuhiro Wada joined Grasshopper Manufacture as COO. He then left Grasshopper, and founded the company Toybox in 2011. During development of Shadows of the Damned, the employee count of Grasshopper would double to 140. On 30 January 2013, Grasshopper Manufacture was acquired by GungHo Online Entertainment. Their first title released under GungHo was Let It Die. In 2018, the company would post a notice of an absorption-type split over issues in management, confirming that Grasshopper Manufacture would now operate independently of GungHo and work on their own intellectual property such as No More Heroes under Goichi Suda's management. GungHo would retain a majority of Grasshopper staff at the time, which would be assigned to work on GungHo-owned IP such as Let It Die. Grasshopper Manufacture would subsequently downsize to a more indie scaled studio, hosting 20 employees as of 2019. The company's first title developed after the split was ', a spinoff entry in the No More Heroes series marketed as a return for the franchise, a tribute to indie games and a commemorative title for Grasshopper Manufacture's history. The game is being followed up with No More Heroes III, the first proper mainline installment for the franchise since 2010. The game retains the core development team from the previous title and is being developed in collaboration with outsourced staff, being self-published by Grasshopper Manufacture, with physical distribution assistance from Nintendo. Both games mark Goichi Suda's return in a directorial role, who hadn't directed a game since the original No More Heroes in 2007.
