Mario Club

Mario Club Co., Ltd. マリオクラブ株式会社
Mario Club logo
Founded	July 2009
Headquarters	60 Fukuinakami Takamatsucho, Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto
Type	Subsidiary
Owner(s)	Nintendo
Industry	Video games
Website Japan: marioclub.co.jp

Older logo

Mario Club Co., Ltd. (Japanese: マリオクラブ株式会社(かぶしきがいしゃ) Mario Club kabushiki gaisha) is a subsidiary of Nintendo responsible for the debugging and quality control of games, including games in the Pokémon series. It was founded in July 2009^[1] after Nintendo spun off the equivalent department known as Super Mario Club (Japanese: スーパーマリオクラブ) or simply Mario Club (Japanese: マリオクラブ)^[2] and led by Kenji Saiki (Japanese: 斎木健次),^[3] who is also credited on the staff list of some Pokémon games.

In an interview first published in Nintendo Online Magazine in April 2000, Kenji Saiki stated that the team consisted completely of part time members in order to ensure that the evaluators had play experiences which closer to that of end-users.^[3] When Nintendo spun off this company into a subsidiary, the team transitioned to full-time employees instead. According to Inside Japan, this was done in order to improve the working conditions for the part-time and contract employees who had previously been part of the team.^[2]

In the Pokémon games, the team is also referred to as NCL Super Mario Club in Western versions, with NCL standing for "Nintendo Co., Ltd."

Pokémon games

The Mario Club team has debugged all of the core series games, as well as many of the side series games. Starting with Pokémon X and Y, this work was done in collaboration with Digital Hearts, another company focused on finding flaws in various software products.

References

External links

• Official website
• Japanese Wikipedia article
• April 2000 staff interview by the Japanese Nintendo Online Magazine
• Article on Starfy Wiki
• Article on Super Mario Wiki

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