Eolith (company)

Eolith Co., Ltd. (Korean: 이오리스) was a South Korean based video game company. They developed The King of Fighters 2001 and The King of Fighters 2002 after SNK was bankrupted. Their last title released was Chaos Breaker, for the arcade system Taito Type X. Although Eolith was founded as an independent company in 1996, Kum Gang published their early arcade games. In 2000, they started a small chain of arcades called G-Park. On June 7th, 2000, they registered at KOSDAQ as the first Korean arcade game maker. Besides video games, their redemption games El Dorado won the Ministry of Culture and Tourism Game of the Month June 2001 award, and Mugunghwa Kkot-i Pieosseumnida (English: The roses of Sharon have blossomed, known as Hide and Seek outside of Korea) won the Game of the Month November 2001 and Arcade Game of the Year 2001 awards. In 2000, the company M-Dream was founded by a former Eolith employee. M-Dream specialized in developing mobile games. They also developed several online games, and localized and published a number of PS2 and PC games. In November 2002, the subsidiary M-Dream China was formed. In 2003, Eolith merged with M-Dream, and Choe Jeongho became the new CEO. On June 3rd, 2005, Eolith was bought out by Netbrain, who was later integrated into the pharma company Neurotech and thoroughly restructured. Neurotech was renamed to Neurotech Pharma on November 8th, 2006, and that same day, Eolith shut down. M-Dream became a separate company again, and continued to publish mobile games until 2007 when they were shut down. Although M-Dream was shut down, M-Dream China is still active, but their website disappeared in 2018. In May 2008, a new company called Neolith was formed from the ashes of Eolith. Neolith received government support of 160,000,000 won, but never showed much as a result.