One Of Nintendo’s Partner Studios Is Based In Troy, NY

Video games have always been the black sheep of entertainment. While films, novels, and music have ubiquitously been considered as art, video games have not.

That doesn't discount the amount of work put into them, however. The development teams on these projects are some of the hardest working in the world, and one of those studios is based in New York's Capital Region.

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Velan Studios

On October 10th, 2016, Karthik and Guha Bala founded a game studio at 5 3rd St. in Troy, New York. Their business plan was simple, so simple you could fit it on four lines of an index card:

1. Build awesome team
2. Find the magic in something new that the team is really passionate about
3. Figure out go to market strategy & partners
4. Build it, ship it, evolve it with the community

That became the core of their business, and they got to work...

Success and Growth

Their first major hit came in 2020, when they worked with video game giant Nintendo to develop Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, an Augmented Reality version of the popular racing game.
The next year, they followed that up with Knockout City, a competitive sports game based on dodgeball ("It's not Dodgeball, It's dodgebrawl" as the tagline says).

Their latest entry is likely their biggest: Star Fox. It's a remake of the 1993 N64 game of the same name, published by Nintendo. Working on a Nintendo side project is one thing, but this was a flagship release that has made Velan into a name to look out for.