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Nintendo EPD Production Group No. 10 is a video game developer under the Nintendo Entertainment Planning and Development structure. The general manager and producer of this one is Hiroyuki Kimura. The group was established as EAD4 and works on specific franchises including sidescrolling Mario games, and the Pikmin franchise. Initially EAD4 was created specifically to work on major handheld titles, though the division soon absorbed the team that worked on the Pikmin games.

Takashi Tezuka mentioned in an interview with Nintendo Power than many people from Nintendo R&D2, the creators of the Super Mario Advance series, were brought over to this group, and that they were very excited about working on New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo DS in 2006. In 2008, EAD 4 recreated Pikmin and Pikmin 2 for the Wii's New Play Control! series. In 2009 they created the follow-up to New Super Mario Bros., calling it New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Following New Super Mario Bros. Wii's success, Nintendo thought it would be best to have the next Super Mario game to be developed by the younger generation, which resulted in New Super Mario Bros. 2 (the sequel to the DS game and a follow-up to the Wii game), a 2012 game for the Nintendo 3DS, headed by the future director of the Splatoon series, Yusuke Amano. Meanwhile, to ensure that at least one of Nintendo's key franchises made it to the Wii U's launch, Nintendo fast-tracked another New Super Mario Bros. game based on a tech demo they premiered at the Wii U's reveal called New Super Mario Bros. U (a sequel to the Wii game and a follow-up to the 3DS game), also released in 2012, developed mostly by the veterans of the Wii iteration. During the development of this title, the team realized the development tools could be converted into a good level editor. After working on it for a couple years, the team created Super Mario Maker.

With the transition to EPD, the team has not been very active with only a few releases and mostly small. Some of the team did assist with Super Mario Run but, otherwise, the team's first new release was in 2019 with the sequel to Super Mario Maker.

List of video games[]

Year Title Platform
As Nintendo EAD Software Group No. 4
2004 Super Mario 64 DS Nintendo DS
2005 Yoshi Touch & Go Nintendo DS
Big Brain Academy Nintendo DS
2006 New Super Mario Bros. Nintendo DS
2007 Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree Wii
2008 New Play Control! Pikmin Wii
2009 New Play Control! Pikmin 2 Wii
New Super Mario Bros. Wii Wii
2012 New Super Mario Bros. 2 Nintendo 3DS
New Super Mario Bros. U Wii U
2013 New Super Luigi U Wii U
Pikmin 3 Wii U
2015 Super Mario Maker Wii U
As Nintendo EPD Production Group No. 10
2016 Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS (with NST) Nintendo 3DS
2019 New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe Switch
Super Mario Maker 2 Switch
2020 Pikmin 3 Deluxe (with Eighting) Switch
2021 Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain (with indieszero and EPD4) Switch
2023 Pikmin 4 (with Eighting) Switch
Super Mario Bros. Wonder Switch

Key people[]

  • Hiroyuki Kimura - Manager and producer of video games. Director of Yoshi Touch & Go.
  • Shigefumi Hino - Big Brain Academy, New Super Mario Bros., director of Pikmin series, creator of Yoshi.
  • Shigeyuki Asuke - Director of New Super Mario Bros., worked heavily on Yoshi Touch & Go and Big Brain Academy.
  • Yuji Kando - Director of Pikmin 3, supervisor on the series
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