Jaleco Ltd Purchased for a Single Yen

The troubled developer has been sold off from its parent company, Jaleco Holdings, as they exit the video game industry.

For those who grew up in the era of the Nintendo Entertainment System, the name Jaleco will always been synonymous with entertaining and memorable titles such as the long-running Bases Loaded series, the platform-racer hybrid City Connection and of course, the woefully under appreciated action title, Shatterhand. Unfortunately, aside from the rereleases of their vintage titles on the Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console service, Jaleco, which was spun off into Jaleco Ltd in 2006, hasn’t meant much of anything to your average gamer as they continued to fade into relative obscurity.

With outlook appearing bleak for the developer, its parent company, Jaleco Holding Ltd, has decided to sell its gaming division to the online game company Game Yarou for a single yen, the US equivalent of one cent. The sale, however, couldn’t have been made with the change at the bottom of your couch, as per the agreement Game Yarou is to assume ¥700,000,000 ($7.736 million) of Jaleco’s ¥16,000,000,000 ($17.68 million) loan, making for a total purchase price of $7.736 million and one cent.

There’s no word on whether Game Yarou will take advantage of Jaleco’s impressive stock of retro favorites, or whether development will continue on any of their current projects which include the promising Wii role-playing title, Kizuna.