Masayuki Uemura, architect of the NES and Super Nintendo, has died – gamekult

It was in 1972 that Masayuki Uemura, then employed at Sharp, joined Nintendo, at a time when video games were obviously not yet part of the vocabulary of the company, especially since Pong just making its arcade debut that fall to become the first commercial success of its kind and plant the seeds for the future industry. In this context, Masayuki Uemura first worked on the Laser Clay System, a pigeon shooting simulator imagined by Gunpei Yokoi, future designer of the Game Boy, which was launched in 1973 and prepared the ground for Duck Hunt.

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Masayuki Uemura was then placed in charge of the R & D2 department, in charge of hardware design. Starting with the Color TV-Game, this range of home consoles with integrated games which will only be released in Japan in 1977. It is obviously not for these machines that Masayuki Uemura will make history. This was written one night in November 1981, when he received a phone call from President Hiroshi Yamauchi putting a little pressure on him: while Gunpei Yokoi’s R & D1 department was a hit thanks to the success of Game & Watch, the team by Masayuki Uemura falls asleep for lack of plans. But Yamauchi knows which way to go and gives him the mission of developing another console connected to the TV, but this time with an interchangeable cartridge games system providing an arcade-worthy gaming experience. The Famicom was launched in Japan on July 15, 1983 with three cartridges: Donkey Kong, Donkey kong jr and Popeye.

Despite some incidents at launch that led Nintendo to recall its product to replace the motherboard that tended to cause crashes, the Famicom will achieve the success we know in Japan and then around the world, launching for good. of the living room video game. Masayuki Uemura’s R & D2 department was also responsible for redesign international console, then renamed Nintendo Entertainment System. Masayuki Uemura was still in charge of this department when the Super Famicom / Super Nintendo was created, which in the process allowed him to work with a certain Ken Kutaragi on the 16-bit sound chip.

“I never thought I was a savior. I was just scared and wanted to be successful in America. Coming here 30 years later, I finally realize that, yes, we saved the video game industry, but at the time I was not aware of it.“, he confided to the site Games Industry in 2015, during a meeting at the International Center for the History of Electronic Games in New York, referring to the market of the time which had collapsed under an avalanche of poor quality products.

Masayuki Uemura has also led the design of peripherals like the Famicom Disk System, Satellaview and NES Zapper. He is also credited as a producer on a number of NES games such as Ice climber, Golf, Tennis, Baseball and on the ports of Donkey kong, Donkey kong jr and Mario bros. He retired in 2004 while remaining close to Nintendo management as a consultant. He was also director of Center for Game Studies at Ritsumeikan University. In early 2020, he was invited by the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield to talk about his career and meet fans.

“The NES is the game material that has influenced me the most. Without her I wouldn’t be here today“, at reacted Masahiro Sakurai on hearing the news.

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