Masayuki Uemura, creator of the popular Nintendo consoles, has passed away

Masayuki Uemura commander-in-chief of the detachment Nintendo Research & Development (R&D) in the 70s-80s In the last century, he died at the age of 78. Uemura was one of the driving forces of the Japanese concern Nintendo at a time when the electronic entertainment industry was just in its infancy. He played a key role in achieving success by such popular devices as, among others Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) or his successor Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES).

Uemura joined the Nintendo in 1972, working with industry visionaries such as Gunpei Yokoi if Genyo Takeda. The aforementioned trio undertook the mission of developing a system of games cooperating with replicas of weapons for municipal playrooms. In 1973, they launched a project known to this day as Laser Clay Shooting Systemwhich involves shooting clay targets with an infrared beam.

A year later, the device was updated – the project was named Mini Laser Clay – it was a cheaper edition, which was mainly equipped with arcades, the biggest modification was the replacement of real targets fired from cannons by objects displayed by a projector. It is safe to say that there was a great predecessor of a gun-shaped controller Zapper Gunwhich most modern gamers remember well from the annoying sessions in Duck Hunt on the platform NES or its Polish version Pegasus.

For the success of the “laser shotgun”, Uemura was awarded a promotion to the position of head of the R&D department in Nintendowhich in those days concentrated most of the forces around Nintendo series consoles Color TV-Game with pre-installed games. These devices were produced in the years 1977-1980, were one of the first steps, the first steps that Nintendo made towards the production of video games known to this day.

In 1981, under the pressure of the then president Nintendo, Hiroshiego Yamauchiegowho wanted a console with replaceable cartridges, Uemura together with his team, they began extensive work on the equipment, which since 1983 has been well known all over the world under the name Famicon (or NES outside of Japan).

Almost immediately after the market premiere Uemura He was delegated to develop the successor project, which, as everyone remembers perfectly from history, won the hearts of players a few years later, in 1990. Uemura he worked for Nintendo until his retirement in 2004, still being an Adviser in Research and Development.

Last year Uemura gave one of his last talks during a visit to The National Videogame Museum (National Video Game Museum), detailing the time spent working for a Japanese company. As he admitted, he was attracted to Nintendo by the values ​​and competences of employees who did not want to duplicate someone else’s ideas, but proudly set their own path in the industry, putting innovation first. Masayuki Uemura was a true pioneer in the industry, he left behind a huge legacy, two successful electronic entertainment systems NES i SNESfor which millions of fans are grateful to him.

DXter

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