 Nintendo logo, used during R&D1's existence | |
_-_panoramio.jpg) Exterior of the former Nintendo headquarters inKyoto, Japan, which housed the department | |
Native name | 任天堂開発第一部 |
|---|---|
Romanized name | Nintendō Kaihatsu Daiichi Bu |
| Formerly | Nintendo Research & Development |
| Company type | Department |
| Industry | Video games |
| Genre |
|
| Founded | 1970; 55 years ago (1970) |
| Founder | Hiroshi Yamauchi |
| Defunct | 2004; 21 years ago (2004) |
| Fate |
|
| Successor | Nintendo Software Planning & Development |
| Headquarters | Kyoto ,Japan |
Key people |
|
Number of employees | 100+ |
| Parent | Nintendo Manufacturing Division |
| Footnotes / references [1] | |
Nintendo Research & Development No. 1 Department[a] (commonly abbreviated asNintendo R&D1 and formerly known asNintendo Research & Development Department[b] before splitting in 1978) was a division ofNintendo, and is its oldestdevelopment team.[2] Its creation coincided with Nintendo's entry into the video game industry, and the original R&D1 was headed byGunpei Yokoi.[3] The developer has created several notable Nintendo series such asDonkey Kong,Mario, andMetroid.[4]
R&D1 developed the hugely successfulGame Boy line, which was released in 1989.[5][6] They developed some of the line's most popular games, such asSuper Mario Land, and created the character ofWario.
Team Shikamaru was a small club within Nintendo R&D1 that was composed ofMakoto Kano,Yoshio Sakamoto, and Toru Osawa. The group was responsible for designing characters and coming up with scripts for several games includingMetroid,Kid Icarus,Famicom Detective Club,Trade & Battle: Card Hero, and several others.
After Yokoi's resignation in 1996, this group was led by Takehiro Izushi.[7] In 2004,Satoru Iwata restructured the Nintendo R&D1 team. Many of the staff members were later reassigned to theNintendo SPD team, which in turn merged withNintendo EAD in 2015 to formNintendo Entertainment Planning & Development.[8]
In 1965,Nintendo, still primarily ahanafuda card manufacturer, hiredGunpei Yokoi, a newly graduated electronics engineer. Yokoi was assigned to the manufacturing division to work on theassembly line machines used to manufacture its cards.[9] In the following year,Hiroshi Yamauchi, president of Nintendo at the time, during a visit to the factory Yokoi was working at, took notice of a toy, an extendingarm, that Yokoi had made for his own amusement during his spare time. As Yamauchi was looking to diversify the company's business far beyond its primary card business, Yokoi was ordered to develop the toy into a proper mass-market product for the 1966 holiday rush. The toy was launched asUltra Hand, and became a huge success, selling over 1.2 million units during its lifetime.[10] Following that, Yokoi was assigned to work on other toys, namely theTen Billion Barrel puzzle, a miniature remote-controlled vacuum cleaner called theChiritori, a baseball throwing machine called theUltra Machine, and a "Love Tester", a novelty device designed to show how much two people loved each other.[11]
Sometime before 1972, Nintendo created its first electronics development team, the Research & Development department from Nintendo's manufacturing division, assigningGunpei Yokoi as its general manager. By 1972 the department had approximately 20 developers. In 1978, the manufacturing division split its single research & development department into two, renaming it to Research & Development No. 1 (R&D1) and creating theNintendo Research & Development No. 2 (R&D2) department. After the split, Yokoi remained general manager of R&D1.[12][13]
In the late 1970s, Yokoi saw a bored Japanesesalaryman playing with acalculator on theShinkansen high-speed train. This was the inspiration for the creation of theGame & Watch series, a line ofhandheld electronic games, with each system featuring a single game to be played on anLCD screen in addition to a clock, an alarm, or both.[14] Regardless, it was confirmed that Yokoi was inspired by calculators to develop the line, even using calculatorintegrated circuits in the systems andbutton cells to power them.[13] Although Nintendo competitorsMattel andTomy had already produced portable games, they were mostly bulky systems with low-resolutionLED displays and uninspiring gameplay. Yokoi exploited the cheapness of LCDs, producing cheap and light systems, starting in 1980. He would later call this principleLateral Thinking of Withered Technology: using seasoned technology in radical ways; a principle that echoed throughout Nintendo until the present day.[14]
In 1980,Game & Watch: Ball was the first release of the Game & WatchSilver series, called after its metallic face-plate. Sales weren't reportedly "astonishing", but they were enough to persuade Nintendo to continue developing new titles.[14] The series saw a total of 5 systems, all released during that year. In 1981,Game & Watch: Manhole debuted theGold series, which was fundamentally the same system with a golden face-plate. It saw only 3 titles which were also released during the same year. In mid-1981,Game & Watch: Parachute was released, debuting theWide Screen series, sporting a 30% larger display. The series saw a total of 10 titles released until early 1982.
The limitations of the LCD display prompted Yokoi and his team to introduce theMulti Screen series with the release ofGame & Watch: Oil Panic in mid 1982, adding another screen to potentially double the amount of gameplay each title could offer. The next title of the series wasGame & Watch: Donkey Kong a port of the hugely successfulDonkey Kong arcade game. Unable to use a joystick like the original game, as it would reduce the system's portability, Yokoi began researching for solutions. Early Game & Watch systems had a button for each action such as moving left and right or jumping. However, for the new system the team introduced the "cross"directional pad (D-pad): a flat, four-way directional control with one button on each point.[14] The design was patented and later earned aTechnology & Engineering Emmy Award in 2008.[15][16] From then on, all majorvideo game consoles since have had a D-pad of some shape on their controllers, until theNintendo Switch in 2017.
When the department started working on a successor to theGame & Watch series, Yokoi envisioned a simple and cheap system with interchangeablegame cartridges. Development of the system, however, suffered from disagreements in direction, with assistant directorSatoru Okada arguing for a more powerful system with third-party development and long-term support from Nintendo, emulating the successful business model thatNintendo R&D2 had achieved with theNintendo Entertainment System, while Yokoi planned for a much cheaper, less powerful device with a shorter life-span, similar to its predecessor. During an interview, Okada compared the initial project to theMicrovision. Eventually, Yokoi agreed to Okada's plan and the project would be known as theGame Boy.[17]
In 1991, Nintendo partnered with Massachusetts-based Reflection Technology, Inc. who had developed a 3D stereoscopichead-tracking prototype called the Private Eye.[18][19] Gunpei Yokoi saw this as a unique technology that competitors would find difficult to emulate. Additionally, the resulting game console was intended to enhance Nintendo's reputation as an innovator[19][20] and to "encourage more creativity" in games.[21]: 514 Code-naming the project "VR32",[19] Nintendo entered into an exclusive agreement with Reflection Technology to license the technology for its displays.[18]
Spending four years in development and eventually building a dedicated manufacturing plant in China,[19] Nintendo worked to turn its VR32 vision into an affordable and health-conscious console design.[20] Yokoi retained RTI's choice of red LED because it was the cheapest,[20] and because unlike a totally backlit LCD, its perfect blackness could achieve a more immersive sense of infinite depth.[19] RTI and Nintendo said a color LCD system would have been prohibitively expensive,[19][22] retailing for more thanUS$500.[21]: 514 A color LCD system was also said to have caused "jumpy images in tests".[22] With ongoing concerns about motion sickness, the risk of developing lazy eye conditions in young children, and Japan's new Product Liability Act of 1995, Nintendo eliminated the head tracking functionality and converted its headmounted goggle design into a stationary, heavy, precision steel-shielded, tabletop form factor conformant to the recommendation of the Schepens Eye Research Institute.[19][21]: 514
According toDavid Sheff's bookGame Over, the increasingly reticent Yokoi never actually intended for the increasingly downscaled console to be released in its final form. However, Nintendo pushed the Virtual Boy to market so that it could focus development resources on theNintendo 64.[23]
In 1995, the department started developing a successor to the Game Boy, under the code-nameAtlantis. Despite its predecessors having amonochrome display, the R&D1 team had already experimented withcolor displays from as early as 1992. TheAtlantis prototype consisted of an handheld with a32-bitARM7 CPU, a largercolor display, and four face buttons. It was reported that the system was supposed to release in late 1996.[24]
Meanwhile, the department was also working on a revision of the Game Boy. The system would require fewer batteries, providing approximately 10 hours of gameplay, and was also equipped with aDC connector which could be used to power the system.[25] The screen was also changed to a true black-and-white display, rather than the green-tintedmonochrome display of the original Game Boy, and had an improved pixel response-time, mostly eliminating theghosting effect. It finally released as theGame Boy Pocket on July 21, 1996, in Japan, on September 3 in North America, and in Europe during the following year.[26] Although it had no power LED initially, it was soon added to later editions due public demand.[27]
Following the commercial success of the Game Boy Pocket, theAtlantis system was delayed by a year to late 1997. Nonetheless, the system was eventually cancelled due to concerns of it being too big, having a drastically decreased battery life (to approximately 1 hour, as LCD color displays required a back-light at the time), and being too expensive to manufacture.[28][29][30][31] Although it was shelved, the project would later considerably speed up the development of theGame Boy Color in 1997 by theNintendo Research & Engineering department.[31]
On August 15, 1996, long-time department general manager, Gunpei Yokoi, left Nintendo to form his own company, Koto Laboratory. Despite speculation that he had left Nintendo due to the commercial failure of theVirtual Boy a year prior, Yokoi clarified that he'd long wished to become independent. Yokoi and his new company eventually worked on theWonderSwan handheld forBandai before his tragic death in 1997 in a traffic accident.[32] In order to fill Yokoi's vacancy, long-time Nintendo engineer Takehiro Izushi was appointed as the new general manager of the department.[33] Additionally, the department's hardware team was spun-off into a new development department, calledNintendo Research & Engineering and led bySatoru Okada.[34] The software development team, however, remained at R&D1. This new department would be responsible for continuing theGame Boy's legacy becoming the source of every major Nintendohandheld game console until its closure in 2012.[35]
Following Yokoi's departure, and no longer having a dedicated hardware development team, the department focused instead on developing games for other Nintendo-developed consoles. It was responsible for the re-releases of itsGame & Watch classics in theGame & Watch Gallery series for both the Game Boy and Game Boy Color, starting in 1997. It also developed sequels to its Wario Land classic in the form ofWario Land II, released in 1998, andWario Land 3, in 2000, both for the Game Boy Color, andWario Land 4 for theGame Boy Advance, released a year later. The department was also responsible for creating theWario spin-off series withWarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames!, released in 2003 for the Game Boy Advance. After an 8-year hiatus, R&D1 introduced a new installment in its Metroid series,Metroid Fusion, released in 2002. In 2004, R&D1's last project was launched,Metroid: Zero Mission a remake of the original game.
In 2004, the department, along withNintendo Research & Development 2, was absorbed into the newly createdNintendo Software Planning & Development division.[36] Then-Nintendo presidentSatoru Iwata created and appointed himself as general manager of the new division to focus on co-producing and supervising second-party development, thus relieving theEntertainment Analysis & Development division (EAD) and its general managerShigeru Miyamoto to focus on first-party projects. Although that was the division's primary focus, it went on to develop some video games titles internally.[37][38]
In 2018, former general manager of the R&D1 department Takehiro Izushi retired from Nintendo after 43 years in the company.[39]
| Year | Name | Ref. |
|---|---|---|
| 1989 | Game Boy | |
| 1995 | Game Boy Play-It-Loud! | |
| Virtual Boy | ||
| 1996 | Game Boy Pocket |
In 1997, Nintendo went one better, shrinking the Game Boy's dimensions to create the even smaller Game Boy Pocket series.
R&D2 would later be merged into the Software Planning and Development Division
In 2004, we established the Software Planning & Development Division to relieve Mr. Miyamoto from handling the games co-developed with second parties to enable him to concentrate on internal development. After that, I was in charge of the Software Planning & Development Division
In 2004, the Software Planning and Development department had only just been created.