On February 1, 2013, the company announced that due to their recent co-development efforts with Nintendo, they were undergoing a change in internal structure. As a result, the company took on its current name. At the same time, co-founder Shinichi Kameoka left to start an independent development studio, Brownies.
Since the 2010s, the company has mainly worked as a support studio to Nintendo EPD, with its staff mainly consisting of character artists, field artists, game designers/planners and programmers.[3]
History
Logo of the company's former name - Brownie Brown - used until February 2013
While the company existed as Brownie Brown, it consisted of many ex-Square Co., Ltd. 2D artists. At least two of its founders (Shinichi Kameoka and Kouji Tsuda) had previously worked on the award-winning Mana series on the Game Boy and Super NES platforms.[4] The founders left Square due to "differing ideals."[5] Kameoka elaborated that he wanted to make Game Boy Advance games, leading to the creation of Brownie Brown.[6]
The company's first original creation was the Japan-only Magical Vacation for the Game Boy Advance, which was released in 2001. Another popular title developed by Brownie Brown was Sword of Mana, which was created for and published by Square Enix. Thought to be a new title in the Seiken Densetsu series, it was actually an enhanced remake of the first game in the series, Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden (known as Mystic Quest in Europe and Final Fantasy Adventure in North America).
The company has also been credited with the development of Mother 3 in a collaborative effort with Shigesato Itoi and HAL Laboratory for the Game Boy Advance, and Magical Starsign (Magical Vacation: When the Five Stars Align in Japan) for the Nintendo DS. Brownie Brown expressed interest in a Nintendo DS port of Mother 3 if Nintendo asked them to make it, and that they would like it to be enjoyed by fans abroad.[7]
While the company has only released video games for Nintendo's handheld video game systems up to this point, the company had previously announced a title for the GameCube, named Gofuku, which was scheduled for release in 2005 and was announced alongside Magical Vacation: When the Five Stars Align.[8][9]
The company later released Blue Dragon Plus for the Nintendo DS, developed alongside Mistwalker,[10] and entered into the downloadable games market in 2009 with A Kappa's Trail, a DSiWare game.[11] Brownie Brown also worked on the DS title Livly Garden, based on a browser game from So-net Entertainment, released in Japan on January 28, 2010,[12] and aided in the development of two Level-5 titles, Professor Layton's London Life, a bonus game included with Professor Layton and the Last Specter, and Fantasy Life, for the DS and 3DS respectively.[13]
On February 1, 2013, the company announced on their original official website that, as a result of their recent development cooperation efforts with Nintendo, Brownie Brown had undergone changes in internal structure, which included officially changing the name of their company to 1-Up Studio and becoming a support studio for Nintendo.[14][6] Upon the changes, Kameoka left 1-Up Studio to found Brownies due to wanting to make original games.[15][6] In the same year, Yoshiaki Koizumi became part of the board of directors of the company as one of its directors.[16]
In 2020, the company moved its headquarters to the new Nintendo Tokyo Office building at Kanda Square, Tokyo with Nintendo EPD Tokyo, Nintendo PTD Tokyo, HAL Laboratory Head Office and Tokyo R&D Center, and Game Freak.[17]
