Masayuki Uemura, the engineer behind the NES and SNES, has passed away at age 78

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Former Nintendo lead architect Masayuki Uemura has passed away at the age of 78. He was responsible for much of the engineering work behind both the Famicom and Super Famicom, and even produced a handful of games for the original Nintendo home console, such as Clu Clu Land, Ice Climber, Soccer, Golf, and Baseball. Uemura also worked on the Satellaview, Famicom Disk System, and NES Zapper, and would go on to assist development on the ill-fated partnership console that never came to be, between PlayStation and Nintendo in the 1990s. He began work at Nintendo in 1971, and stayed with the company until his retirement in 2004.

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Urbanshadow

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stayed with the company until his retirement in 2004.​

The DS was announced that year. Wii, Wii U, the tornado of DS/3DS variants and finally Switch came afterwards. I am not afraid to say I see how Nintendo hardware strategy changed when this man decided to finally retire. Rest in peace.
 

spotanjo3

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He was the best! The Famicom (NES) and Super Famicom (SNES) was also the best classic consoles ever. I am so proud to have both as mini classics in my collector's item. Absolutely my favorite consoled of all time! Thank you, Masayuki Uemura!
 

Marc_LFD

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He was the best! The Famicom (NES) and Super Famicom (SNES) was also the best classic consoles ever. I am so proud to have both as mini classics in my collector's item. Absolutely my favorite consoled of all time! Thank you, Masayuki Uemura!
SNES and Genesis are my go-to retro consoles for different games. NES is good, but overrated, imo.

RIP, Mr. Uemura Masayuki.
 
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Maeson

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Horribly sad news... May he rest in peace. Uemura certainly took a significant role in both Nintendo and video games' history as a whole, and he spent years teaching others which no doubt helps too.

Both the NES and the SNES (or Famicom and Super Famicom if you want) have very interesting development stories, with the former being quite the ordeal to get rolling, in no small part thanks to Hiroshi Yamauchi being amazingly vague in what he wanted (imagine getting a call from your boss saying "make something to play arcade games at home and it needs to not have competition in less than three years" and letting you on your own) and imposing limits that made little sense, like no being able to work with the company you've been working with for other products.

But he and his team got to create something that shaped the medium, and even helped bring back to life certain market, something we still pay attention to and enjoy playing.

To this day I still discover games on those systems I never knew before, and thanks to how the cartridges were capable of improving the system's capabilities, it's pretty neat to see how video games evolved inside those systems throughout their life. There's such a long road from, I don't know, Golf to NES Open Tournament Golf, or early Famicom games such as Jajamaru-Kun to Ninja Gaiden, and it's surprising that something like Final Fantasy IV and Seiken Densetsu 3 are on the same system.

He was behind other things, like the Famicom Disk System and the Satellaview, which are also fascinating (and getting harder to preserve). Such interesting times to read about game development...
 
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