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Nintendo Research & Development 1, shortened: Nintendo R&D1, is Nintendo's oldest development studio. Originally known simply as Nintendo Nintendo Research & Development (shortened Nintendo 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 & Development.

Games[]

NES[]

Famicom Disk System[]

  • 3D Hot Rally: Famicom Grand Prix II
  • Famicom Club Part I: Keita Koukeisha
  • Famicom Club Part II: Ushiro ni Tatsu Shoujo
  • Kid Icarus
  • Metroid

SNES[]

Nintendo 64[]

iQue[]

Gamecube[]

Wii[]

Game Boy[]

Game Boy Color[]

Game Boy Advance[]

Nintendo DS[]

Game & Watch[]

Arcade[]

External links[]

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