NES and SNES console chief designer has passed away

Masayuki Uemura, a former Nintendo engineer and chief designer of the NES and SNES game consoles, has died aged 78. This was confirmed by the Japanese university where the man taught as a visiting professor.

Uemura joined Nintendo in 1972, where he helped develop the Laser Clay Shooting System, a game experience that mimicked clay shooting and formed the basis for the later Duck Hunt game on the NES console.

In a 2020 interview with Kotaku, Uemura said that one day in 1981, he received a phone call from Hiroshi Yamauchi, then Nintendo’s boss. He asked him to build a video game system that could play games via cartridges. Uemura thought this was a whim of Yamauchi, but according to the engineer he was still in his office the next day to get the project started.

As a first step, Yamauchi reportedly bought all competing game consoles. He dissected these before he started developing the Famicom, Nintendo’s game console that was released on the Japanese market in 1983. The Famicom was a success in its home country Japan, although the system initially suffered from a lot of defects. In 1984 Nintendo also sold the game console on the American market, but in the form of an arcade console that could only be found in American arcades. In 1985 the Nintendo Entertainment System was released to the North American market which was basically a Famicom console with a modified design.

In 1988, Nintendo first showed the designs for the Super Famicom video game console. Uemura also contributed to the development of the Super Famicon, better known in the West as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. He would later remain active in the company developing new products and games.

In 2004, Uemura left Nintendo and became a guest lecturer at Japan’s Ritsumeikan University. There he taught about video game and game console development. The Japanese university reports that Masayuki Uemura died on December 6, at the age of 78.

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