TAXAN was a brand of Kaga Electronics Co. Ltd, Tokyo, Japan. It was founded in July 1981. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the US division published several video games on the

NES The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on 15 July 1983 as the and was later released as the redesigned NES in several test markets in the ...

and

Game Boy The is a handheld game console developed by Nintendo, launched in the Japanese home market on April 21, 1989, followed by North America later that year and other territories from 1990 onwards. Following the success of the Game & Watch single-ga ...

. The company shut down in 1991 according to former employee

Ken Lobb Kenneth Alan Lobb (also credited as Ken Lobb, KAL, and K. Lobb) is an American video game designer formerly employed by Taxan USA Corp., Namco Hometek, and Nintendo of America, and currently employed by Xbox Game Studios as Creative Director. H ...

Taxan (UK) Ltd and Taxan (Europe) Ltd

On 12 December 1985, Kaga Electronic Company Ltd opened a UK office in

Bracknell, Berkshire Bracknell () is a town and civil parish in Berkshire, England, the westernmost area within the Greater London Urban Area and the administrative centre of the borough of Bracknell Forest. It lies to the east of Reading, south of Maidenhead, ...

. Taxan (UK) Ltd initially sold a range of

monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, mon ...

and colour monitors for

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, IBM-compatible and Apple personal computers as well the highly successful KP810 and KP910

dot matrix printer Dot matrix printing, sometimes called impact matrix printing, is a computer printing process in which ink is applied to a surface using a relatively low-resolution dot matrix for layout. Dot matrix printers are a type of impact printer that p ...

s with

NLQ Near letter-quality (NLQ) printing is a process where dot matrix printers produce high-quality text by using multiple passes to produce higher dot density. The tradeoff for the improved print quality is reduced printing speed. Software can also be ...

printing technology. The company appointed Northamber plc and P&P Micro Distributors followed by Bytech Peripherals Ltd to sell Taxan products to computer resellers. In addition, Taxan appointed approximately 50 leading

reseller A reseller is a company or individual ( merchant) that purchases goods or services with the intention of selling them rather than consuming or using them. Individual resellers are often referred to as middle men. This is usually done for profit ( ...

s who purchased directly from Taxan and were chosen specifically to build the brand in the UK. Taxan also supplied a number of system integrators and OEM customers either under the Taxan brand or original brand. This included

Dell Computer Corporation Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

who set up their first UK office in the building next door to Taxan. Despite considerable success in the dot matrix printer market, Taxan (UK) Ltd made a decision in 1987 to focus on monitors and thus the KP815 and KP915 were the last printers sold in the UK. By 1987, Taxan became the market leader in the UK and as a result of this position Kaga Electronics decided to transfer all activities for Europe to the UK office, renaming the Company Taxan (Europe) Ltd. Taxan (Europe) Ltd expanded operations in Europe rapidly, which included opening subsidiary companies and offices in Germany, France, and Sweden. Distributors were appointed throughout Europe and the company enjoyed considerable growth. In addition to selling computer monitors, the company also sold a range of

graphics card A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics accelerator, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or colloquially GPU) is a computer expansion card that generates a feed of graphics output to a displa ...

s under Taxan brand. This included products designed and manufactured in Japan as well as a highly successful relationship with Paradise System Inc. In 1987, Taxan added the ATI EGA Wonder Graphics adaptor (under the ATI brand) to its product range establishing a strong relationship with the founder of ATI Technologies in

Toronto, Canada Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

. This led to Taxan eventually working with ATI on an exclusive basis selling graphics adapters under the Taxan brand and eventually under the ATI brand only. At its peak, Taxan (Europe) Ltd revenues exceeded $80 million per year.

Product list to 1985

*KX-12G (Monochrome with either P31 or P39 Green Phosphor) *KX-12A (Monochrome with Amber Phosphor) *12" Vision I (0.63mm

Dot Pitch Dot pitch (sometimes called line pitch, stripe pitch, or phosphor pitch) is a specification for a computer display, computer printer, image scanner, or other pixel-based devices that describe the distance, for example, between dots ( sub-pixels) ...

Colour Monitor) *12" Vision II (0.51mm Dot Pitch Colour Monitor) *12" Vision III (0.38mm Dot Pitch Colour Monitor) *Supervision II (Colour Monitor) *Supervision III (Colour Monitor) *Supervision IVM (Colour Monitor) *Supervision IV (Colour Monitor) *KP810, KP815 80 Col Dot Matrix Printer *KP910, KP915 156 Col Dot Matrix Printer

List of games

References

{{reflist

External links

Taxan USA / Kaga Electronics (USA) Inc. pageTAXAN projector page
Companies established in 1981 Video game companies established in 1981 Video game companies disestablished in 1991 Defunct video game companies of the United Kingdom Video game publishers