Gaming
 

Nintendo R&D1

From the Nintendo Wiki, your gateway to information on everything Nintendo

Nintendo R&D1
Headquarters Kyoto, Japan (now SPD)
Key people Gunpei Yokoi, Yoshio Sakamoto, Hitoshi Yamagami, Toru Osawa
Products Various video games, Nintendo hardware

Nintendo R&D1 is Nintendo's oldest development studio. Originally known simply as R&D, the names was changed when Nintendo R&D2 and Nintendo R&D3 were formed.

R&D1 was originally headed by Gunpei Yokoi. In the early days, it was in charge of arcade games and the LCD Game & Watch series. The team included Shigeru Miyamoto until he earned his own team by creating Donkey Kong.

R&D1 was originally Nintendo's biggest development group, so most Nintendo games for the NES were developed by them. Some of the more popular games by R&D1 include Metroid, Kid Icarus, Excitebike, Duck Hunt, and Mach Rider. While R&D1 was responsible for many of Nintendo's heavy hitters, development on the Mario series and The Legend of Zelda series was not handled by them during the NES era.

Within R&D1, a group named Team Shikamaru emerged. Made up of Yoshio Sakamoto, Hitoshi Yamagami, and Toru Osawa, they were in charge of scripts and scenrios for R&D1. The group had written scripts for Metroid 2, Super Metroid, Detective Club, Detective Club 2, Card Hero, and For the Frog the Bell Tolls.

When the Super Nintendo was released, R&D1 was asked to develop titles for the Game Boy. Because of this, they were sometimes referred to as R&D Game Boy or EAD Game Boy.

Along with continuing with their own franchises, R&D1 also got to work with the Mario series by creating the Super Mario Land games. Eventually, they got to do their own take on it: Wario Land.

After the disastrous Virtual Boy, Gunpei Yokoi left Nintendo to form Koto Laboratory. Takehiro Izushi was appointed the new head of R&D1.

When the Game Boy Advance was released, R&D1 was once again the main group creating games for it. They created new Metroid and Wario Land games as well as the all-new WarioWare series.

In 2005, in order to consolidate all the game developers, president Satoru Iwata merged R&D1 with Nintendo Software Planning and Development.

Contents

[edit] Games

[edit] NES

[edit] Famicom Disk System

[edit] SNES

[edit] Nintendo 64

[edit] iQue

[edit] Gamecube

[edit] Wii

[edit] Gameboy

[edit] Gameboy Color

[edit] Gameboy Advance

[edit] Nintendo DS

[edit] Game & Watch

[edit] Arcade

Retrieved from "http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/Nintendo_R%26D1"