Paon DP

Paon Corporation
Type	Public
Founded	20th January, 1999
Headquarters	Tokyo, Japan
Industry	Video Game Development
Products	Video games
Employees	120
Website	www.paon.co.jp (Japanese)

Paon Corporation (パオン) is a Japanese video game company that makes games for Nintendo. It was founded on January 20th, 1999. When Rare, Ltd., a company that made games in the Donkey Kong series for Nintendo until it became a subsidiary of Microsoft in 2002, left Nintendo, Nintendo used Paon to develop certain Donkey Kong games such as DK: King of Swing, DK: Jungle Climber and Donkey Kong Barrel Blast. In addition to making Donkey Kong titles, they were also one of many game developers to buy the rights to many franchises previously owned by Data East after its bankruptcy, including Glory of Heracles, which would later get an installment for the Nintendo DS in 2008 published by Nintendo titled "Glory of Heracles: Proof of the Soul" (Released in North America as simply "Glory of Heracles"). They also worked on re-releasing old games for the Wii Virtual Console.

Paon's only Super Smash Bros. game so far is Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which they developed in co-operation with Sora Ltd., HAL Laboratory, Inc., Monolith Soft, Intelligent Systems and Game Arts.

In Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Paon was a lead developer for this game. The studio handled later assignments on the foundation created by Sora Ltd. and Game Arts.

All three of Paon's Donkey Kong-developed titles, King of Swing, Jungle Climber, and Barrel Blast, have been represented through several trophies and stickers. In addition, Barrel Blast was also represented with a music track called DK Jungle 1 Theme (Barrel Blast), which plays on Rumble Falls.

In Super Smash Bros. for Wii U

A song from Glory of Heracles for the Nintendo DS appears in the Coliseum stage titled Glory of Heracles.

In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

After having all of its content cut from Smash 4, Donkey Kong Barrel Blast received representation again with Kip and Kalypso returning as spirits, as well as a Kritter using artwork from said game. Additionally, DK: Jungle Climber received representation again with the Boss 2 - DK: Jungle Climber music track.

Heracles, as he appears in Glory of Heracles for the Nintendo DS, as well as the protagonist of said game, both appear as Spirits. The Glory of Heracles music track returns from Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, now only playing on stages from non-playable universes.