In 1974, Nakamura purchased the Japanese division of Atari from Nolan Bushnell, seeing it as a perfect opportunity to get into the market, and were allowed to release the company's games in Japan.

Under Nakamura's leadership, Namco would become one of the most dominant video game companies in Japan, alongside Nintendo, Sega and Konami.

He also led Namco to begin maintaining arcade centers and amusement parks across Japan and soon overseas, such as Wonder Eggs in Tokyo, and to purchase the Aladdin's Castle chain from Bally.

Nakamura would also assist in the formation of Japanese developer Monolith Soft, and become the chairman of the Japan Amusement Machine and Marketing Association (JAMMA).

[3] He graduated from the Yokohama Institute of Technology in 1948 with a degree in shipbuilding,[4] however following World War II he was unable to secure a job with his experience.

[5][3][6] Beginning with US$3,000, he purchased two mechanical rocking horse rides that had to be installed on the roof of a department store due to stiff competition.

[9] In 1972, Nakamura visited the Japanese branch of Atari, formed by Nolan Bushnell as a response to the country's vast market and enthusiasm for arcade games.

With the business struggling, Atari Japan was closed in 1974 and put up for auction — Nakamura saw this as the perfect opportunity to get into the video game market and purchased it for US$500,000, beating rival Sega's offer of US$50,000.

[7] Impressed by the success of the Atari Japan acquisition, Nakamura was interested in his company creating his own arcade games in-house.

He purchased a surplus amount of PDA-80 microcomputers from NEC and instructed his employees to analyze the hardware to intentionally create video games.

[3] Under Nakamura's leadership, Namco would produce several successful games throughout the 1980s, including Galaga (1981), Ms. Pac-Man (1982), Dig Dug (1982), Pole Position (1982), Xevious (1983) and The Tower of Druaga (1984).

Unlike rival companies, notably Nintendo, Nakamura tested each of Namco's video games before they were released, sometimes for up to 23 hours at a time.

[3] Nakamura is considered to have been one of the first to identify the potential of "screen addiction" due to how much younger people would play Pac-Man and his company's other games.

He had hoped the acquisition would develop a strong relation between the two companies like it once had in the 1970s, however he instead had a distaste towards it and sold off his stake to Hideyuki Nakajima in 1987,[7] who would resign as president of Namco America and become the CEO of Tengen.

[17] Nakamura helped assist Tetsuya Takahashi with the formation of Japanese developer Monolith Soft in 1999, where Namco would publish their Xenosaga series.

Following the unveil of the Xbox, Nakamura formed an alliance with Microsoft to produce games for the console, with Namco becoming one of the first Japanese developers to support it.