Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

Tose is the company behind such games as Kid Icarus, Super Princess Peach, Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, Final Fantasy IV and VI, and many, many more. “WHAT?!” you’re shrieking right now. “Nintendo and Square Enix made those titles!” Not entirely.

Tose is a company that Nintendo, Capcom, Square Enix, and many other companies outsource to. Not only does Tose port games to other consoles, but also develops games, even games based on prized franchises. It’s done mostly in secret – *if* Tose is credited at all, it will be in the Special Thanks section, and if specific employees of Tose are named, they will use pseudonyms. The company proudly displays its client list on the website, but have contracts with most to never reveal which games they’ve worked on.

Here’s a quote from the 1Up article to help explain the secrecy:

“Why all this secrecy? A few years ago I was lucky enough to speak with members of Tose and I jumped at the opportunity to ask them about their company’s practices. My questions immediately brought huge grins to their faces — this dirty little secret is what their company is based on. Since its inception, Tose has worked behind the scenes and with the pledge that it will never act as a publisher; it will follow other publisher’s visions. “We have a different vision than most other companies,” Tose’s Daisuke Satou told 1UP. “What we want is to support publishers in creating good games and help them make lots of money. We want to be a strong hidden crew that helps them achieve their goals.” And it seems Tose is pretty open to helping publishers in whatever manner works best for them. “We do all types of different work for publishers, ranging from assisting with certain elements to developing an entire game. Sometimes a publisher will just come to us with an idea or license and hand off all the design and development to us.” Tose also comes relatively cheap — many of its developers are fresh out of school and look at the job as a foot in the door as well as an opportunity to work on some of gaming’s biggest franchises.”

Tose employee Daisuke Satou also told 1Up “There are publishers that simply don’t have the resources to develop everything they’d like to release but don’t want to necessarily give off that impression — that’s where we come in,” said Satou. “Also, some publishers have used us for quite some time, so they know exactly what to expect.”

American developers are now starting to use Tose as well, and don’t mind crediting Tose (or else they’re unaware that in Japan, Tose’s work is usually kept secret). Chances are, we’ll be playing more and more games from Tose – we just won’t always know it.