Fujisankei Communications International, Inc. is the American arm of the Fujisankei Communications Group, a Japanese media conglomerate of television and radio channels, magazine, newspaper, record and video game companies. The Fujisankei Communications Group regroups more than 90 companies, like Fuji TV in Japan, among others. Founded in 1986 in New York City and owned by Fuji Media Holdings, FCI makes productions from the Fujisankei Communications Group available to the United States and the rest of the western world. FCI was involved with videogame publishing as well, being one of the early third-party licensees for Nintendo's NES system. Originally, FCI merely published in North America translations of video games that were released in Japan mainly by Pony Canyon, another company from the Fujisankei Communications Group. FCI was well-known at this time for the many RPG and Adventure games they released for the NES as conversions from PC games, such as the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Ultima series. Later, FCI began contracting outside development houses to create original games; examples include WCW Super Brawl Wrestling and ', both developed by Beam Software of Australia; ', developed by Iguana Entertainment; and Metal Morph and the Runes of Virtue titles in the Ultima series, both developed by Origin Systems. FCI had a long partnership with Origin, starting when Pony Canyon was hired to translate the Ultima PC games for Japan, strengthening through the conversion of Ultima III through Ultima VII for the NES and SNES by Pony Canyon/FCI, and continuing through the end of FCI's videogame department; a conversion of Origin's PC gameWing Commander II to the SNES was in development for release by FCI when they closed their video games division. In the mid-1990s, FCI abandoned video game distribution to concentrate on television operations. FCI has contracts with television stations in New York City, Hawaii and California to air programming segments. Since 1999, Fuji TV, through FCI, has forbidden foreign TV stations from subtitling its dramas, a practice that is criticized and has alienated some fans of the genre. The company continues to be based in Manhattan, but has since moved from its original offices to its current location around 1988–1989. FCI also has secondary offices in the United States, Europe and Egypt.
