Leading Company

Leading Company (リーディングカンパニー) is a Japanese-only Super Famicom video game that challenges young people to create their own empire by researching and marketing better VHS machines for the Japanese consumers. The introduction consists of a jazzy instrumental song being played in the background while neon pictures of various people fly across the screen. As of 2008, there has been no English language patch created for this game yet. This game is considered to be in Japanese for the full duration of the game, making literacy skills in Japanese mandatory. Only the brand names themselves use the Latin alphabet; all other words use the Japanese alphabet. There are only two time periods in the game and jazz music plays throughout the entire game.



The player can either start in the 1970s when VCRs were beginning to be researched in Japan or in the 1980s when VHS (and video cassette recorders) were beginning to come of age. Instead of following a budget, the player has to follow stock market quotes. It is considered to be the job of the player to try to keep them profitable. If they go down to zero or less, then his or her company goes bankrupt. At this point, he or she loses the game. Also, each product that he or she manufactures has a separate profit chart. When an older model goes down in profits, research and manufacture a newer one (don't forget to discontinue the older one first) and make more money from willing Japanese customers.

Other meanings

 * A leading company is a company that is winning the corporate wars. Its employees are considered by most people to be winning the "rat race."