What is "psikyo"

was a Japanese video game company started in 1992. Psikyo is an offshoot formed from the staff that created the Aero Fighters series for Video System. Psikyo focused on arcade games, mostly vertically scrolling shoot 'em ups and erotic mahjong games. The popularity of these arcade games led to them being ported to home consoles, and then ultimately to Psikyo developing games for consoles.

Psikyo was acquired by X-Nauts in mid-2002. In 2003, it was reported that Psikyo was shutting down. Shortly afterwards, X-Nauts stated this news was wrong. Games under the Psikyo label would continue to be released, but would be outsourced to other teams.

Psikyo was known for its difficult "second loops"; after completing the game, you start again, with a high difficulty increase over the first "loop". This has been present in every Psikyo shooter, since Samurai Aces, and was present in Aero Fighters. This has even been extended to Aero Fighters 2 and Aero Fighters 3, although these games are not developed by Psikyo.