Smileworks

Smile Games (full name: Smile Games Inc.) is an American video game company founded in 1985. The company also has divisions worldwide, such as Smile Games of Japan (株式会社スマイルゲームズ日本 Kabushikigaisha Sumairu Gēmuzu Nihon), Smile Games of Europe, and Smile Games of Australia.

History
The company was founded in 1985. Smile mainly produced arcade games as well as computer and console games. In Japan, the games were each co-published by Jaleco, Atlus, Taito, Konami, and Namco. Smile Games would begin their Japanese divisions in 1987, along with other worldwide divisions the following year.

Originally, the founder wanted to the company to be a first party company and make their own console, but plans for the console fell apart as the founder wanted to focus on developing third-party software. Despite this, Smile has developed and created several arcade boards to release some of their arcade games. However, during the lifespan of the Sega Dreamcast, most of the games released for the said system used the NAOMI arcade board by Sega themselves. For N64, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, GameCube, and original Xbox ports of the games that were made on the NAOMI board, they used the Smile Bob X arcade board by Smile themselves.

Beginning in 2008, Smile Games started a label named Mug of Beer, which focused on releasing games geared to mature audiences as most of the previous games have been rated E, E10+ and T. In mid 2010, Smile Games stopped using the label as they felt confident in publishing mature games.

In early 2013, Electronic Arts (or EA) offered Smile for a possible merger between the two companies, but Smile Games denied EA's offer.

In June 2014, Smile announced that they have partnered up with Warner Animation Group to produce a movie adaption of Item Camp, and is set to be released in summer 2019.

In December 2017, Smile Games announced that they have purchased the IPs of defunct companies The 3DO Company and Crave Entertainment. Later at this announcement, they had showed a new game in the Army Men series, a reboot of Dragon Rage (both originally owned by The 3DO Company) and a sequel to Super Magnetic Neo (originally owned by Crave Entertainment). They had also announced that a sequel to Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion was in the works, with a late 2018 release.

In May 2018, Smile Games purchased and acquired the company Gamevice in order to stop Gamevice from suing Nintendo over the lawsuit of the Nintendo Switch. Later, Smile Games eliminated all of Gamevice's peripherals, and Smile Games issued recalls of the products of Gamevice. Gamevice is now a developer for the games of Smile.

In August 2018, Smile Games announced that they have acquired the rights of the Croc IP from the now defunct Fox Interactive as well as the Kao the Kangaroo IP from the also defunct Titus Interactive and plans to release new sequels to the games, in particularly Croc and plans to finish Croc 3 along with bringing back Argonaut Software. However, Warner Bros. Games had plans to also reboot the Croc franchise. To avoid any potential conflicts with WB Games, Smile Games agreed to give the Croc IP to WB and Smile kept the Kao IP. Despite this, WB and Smile decided to collaborate with each other to create a game based off the Collin the Speedy Boy series (resulting in a Alexis Doll game) and Croc series. Two weeks later, they announced that they are rebooting the Kao the Kangaroo IP in a darker and edgier setting.

In late September of 2018, Smile Games of Japan revealed that they have acquired the rights to the Magical Pop'n game and plans to release a HD remake of the game. Smile Games announced that the game will be localized for North America and Europe, with a release for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Microsoft Windows.

In October 2018, Smile Games revealed a reboot of Dragon's Lair, which showed gameplay similar to Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair. Don Bluth, the creator of the series, will be animating the cutscenes in the reboot. The reboot of Dragon's Lair is scheduled for a January 2019 release for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Steam.

In November 2018, Smile had released the 3DO Classic, a dedicated console similar to the NES Classic and PlayStation Classic.

In March 2019, it is revealed that Smile will acquire Kemco and will act as a shell corporation, similar to Atlus also being a shell corporation for Sega.

Mascots
Smile Games's main mascot for it's worldwide operations is a simple smiley face known as just Mr. Smile. North America had a short lived mascot known as Samuel Smile. He would appear at the end of every Smile Games commercial from 1991 to 1996. The character's reception was very negative, which was told by consumers as "creepy, ugly and annoying". Because of this, Smile announced in late 1996 that Samuel would be retiring and that Mr. Smile, the company's primary mascot, would also serve as a mascot for North America. In Japan, they recieved an exclusive mascot named Smile-chan, a human and genderbent version of Mr. Smile. Smile Games's other macots include Pop, the main protagonist of the Item Camp series and Benny Bird, the main protagonist of the Rolling Bird series.

Flagship Series

 * Item Camp
 * Tornado Wings
 * Of the Unknown
 * Jelly Buster
 * Sam the Sloth
 * The Adventures of Chris Cat
 * Elements of Destiny
 * Rolling Bird
 * Blocky
 * The Wild Shape West
 * Clash Frontier
 * Banana and Cookie
 * Extreme GP
 * Fairy Flight
 * The Bacteria Saga
 * The Mind Ransom
 * Smart Inventors
 * Vector Force
 * Agents of Millennium
 * Code Red
 * Dead High
 * Paint Witches
 * The Legend of Kao the Kangaroo

Licenses

 * Hilda

Subsidiaries

 * Smile Research & Development: Developers of most Smile Games's products
 * Crazy Software: Another developer
 * Studio DX: Developer of most Smile arcade games
 * Item Squad: Developer of the Item Camp series as well as a couple of other IPs
 * Nippon Smile (日本スマイル Nihon Sumairu): Japanese developer of Smile Games
 * Smile Amusements: Manufacturer of the Smile arcade games

Policies
According to the president of Smile Games, in order for a game to be a full pledged series, they must meet these criteria: they have to exceed three games, must sold well and must be met with positive reviews (mixed reviews may work as well).