Treasure was founded on June 19, 1992; the company name came from wanting to be a "treasure" to the industry. Around the time of founding, the company had just over ten people. Even though most of the staff made games for the Super NES at Konami, they wanted to develop "Gunstar Heroes" for the Sega Genesis because the system's Motorola 68000 microprocessor was necessary for the visuals and gameplay they were striving for. Treasure approached Sega for a publishing contract. At first, they were not granted approval because they lacked a track record, but Sega instead contracted them to develop "McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure" (1993). Several months into development, they were granted approval to work on "Gunstar Heroes". Treasure staff was split into two teams to work on both games in parallel. They had a staff of around 18 people at the time, most being ex-Konami programmers. The staff felt they had more freedom working under Sega than Konami.