Hi! I'm trying to (narrow down my search) in order to identify an unusual typeface on a 1991 Japanese game cartridge.

 

It's basically Maru Gothic, but with line weights on certain characters (ト く & に) for example.

Already looked in Adobe fonts, fontworks.co.jp and myfonts.com and not yet seen anything close.

Any ideas?

The closest I can find is AB Shiguma.

Close...but no banana. The ku く character is very distinct. (Look at the top and bottom half in terms of line weight)

 

After going down a rabbit hole yesterday... I came up with:

Just because it was around thirty years ago doesn't automatically mean it'll still be around today.  =

It might still exist - but in a back catalog such as Shaken fonts which will take more time to compare and contrast.

 

I'll keep looking - just because

A) it's still bugging me ( and it needs to be found!)

B) it's very different.

 

Not every typeface in a real world is scanned, and converted into a font file. It just might not exist in a digital form.

It may have been done on PAVO with a (digital/analog) phototypesetting  (写真植字) machine.

But it would still exist as a typeface.