Tradewest

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Tradewest is a now-defunct video game company based in Corsicana, Texas that produced numerous games in the 1980s and early 1990s.

1 History
- 1.1 Today
2 List of games distributed by Tradewest
3 Reference
4 External links

[edit] History

Tradewest was founded in 1986 in Corsicana by Leland Cook and his son Byron Cook. Tradewest started out by manufacturing SNK's Ikari Warriors arcade game in the United States. This would be one of the few arcade games to be released by Tradewest (along with Victory Road and Redline Racer) as the company would shift away from the coin-op business to concentrate on video games for home consoles.

In 1987, the Cooks purchased Cinematronics from El Cajon, California and renamed the latter company Leland Corporation, which would later be merged into Tradewest in 1991. The man chosen to run the El Cajon office was John Rowe who already had a history in video games as president of SNK's American division.

Tradewest was acquired by WMS Industries (the owners of the Williams and Midway brands) in 1994, and renamed Williams Entertainment, Inc., thus signalling the end of Tradewest as a company. Williams Entertainment became WMS's official division and entrance to the video game console market. In 1996, WMS was losing interest in video games and, as such, Williams Entertainment was transferred to Midway who renamed the division Midway Home Entertainment, Inc.. Like it was the case with WMS, the division served as Midway's foothold to the home console market, who could now port its video games itself without having to rely on other publishers. Both the Corsicana and El Cajon initially remained opened within Midway and continued to employ Byron Cook (who became president of Midway Home Entertainment) and John Rowe.

[edit] Today

Midway's head office in Chicago shut down the Corsicana location and terminated its staff in late 2002.

The El Cajon location moved to nearby San Diego, California and is now the only office for Midway Home Entertainment.

Byron Cook has left video games for politics at the end of the year 2000. He is a Republican State Representative in Texas for the Corsicana district.