Intelligent Systems | Code Like It's 198x

Intelligent Systems has made Nintendo games for more than forty years without ever becoming a household name. Its founders programmed Duck Hunt and Metroid before the company existed. It turned war into a board game with Famicom Wars in 1988, built a fantasy saga on the same grid with Fire Emblem in 1990, and made Advance Wars, the game Edge called “the best game available for the Game Boy Advance”. Behind the games sits a second business that players never see: the development tools that other studios have used to write games for Nintendo’s machines, from the Game Boy onwards.

Fast facts

Origins: from 1983, a department of Iwasaki Giken Kogyo developing games for Nintendo.
Founded: December 1986, in Kyoto, when that department became a company of its own.
Leaders: Ryoichi Kitanishi, representative director from 1986; Toshiyuki Nakamura, president since 2010.
Strategy series: Famicom Wars (1988) and its successors, including Advance Wars (2001); Fire Emblem (1990 onwards).
With Nintendo teams: Super Metroid (1994), the Paper Mario series (from 2000), Mario Kart: Super Circuit (2001), the WarioWare series (from 2003).
Tools: development tools for the Game Boy (1989), Super Famicom (1990) and each Nintendo handheld since.
Size: 223 staff in April 2026, 98 of them graphic designers and 71 programmers.

Famicom games under contract

The company’s own history begins in 1983, the year the Famicom went on sale. A department of Iwasaki Giken Kogyo, a company since dissolved, took on game programming for Nintendo, and the history lists the Famicom games its founding members worked on there: Mario Bros., Tennis, Wild Gunman, Duck Hunt, Hogan’s Alley, Donkey Kong 3, Devil World, Soccer, Wrecking Crew, Gyromite, Stack-Up and Metroid. Many of these were Nintendo R&D1 games, designed inside Nintendo: R&D1’s Hiroji Kiyotake started work on Duck Hunt.

The company’s website recalls how small it was. The author of its top message writes that the first game they programmed was Tennis, released soon after the Famicom itself, by a team of three university students who loved computers, working in one room of a small flat. With no division of labour and almost no development tools, they did the design and graphics as well as the program. In the company’s words, its founders built all the tools and know-how they needed themselves, because none existed.

In December 1986 the department became independent as Intelligent Systems, with Ryoichi Kitanishi as representative director and two development labs. Western accounts, including a 2017 Shacknews history, name Tohru Narihiro as the founder, and say Nintendo contracted him to convert Famicom Disk System games to cartridges for the NES. The company’s own history does not mention Narihiro. He appears in the credits of the first Fire Emblem under special thanks, alongside Kitanishi.

War on a grid

Famicom Wars (1988) set red and blue armies against each other on a map of squares, turn by turn, with factories to build new units. Fire Emblem (1990) kept the grid and the turns and gave every unit a name, a story and one life. Its credits show how the work was shared: Nintendo’s Gunpei Yokoi produced it and Nintendo’s Keisuke Terasaki directed, while the scenario was by Shouzou Kaga of Intelligent Systems and most of the programmers and artists came from the company too. Yuka Tsujiyoko of Intelligent Systems wrote music with Nintendo’s Hirokazu Tanaka. Nintendo Power later wrote that Nintendo had “took a chance on an unusual game” that combined strategy and role-playing, and that it became “a cult classic”.

Both series stayed in Japan for more than a decade. Game Boy Wars followed in 1991 and Super Famicom Wars in 1998, and the Fire Emblem games moved to the Super Famicom. Nintendo’s director Kentaro Nishimura later told Edge that when he joined Nintendo he was told turn-based games “would never be successful abroad”.

Working alongside Nintendo

Through the 1990s Intelligent Systems also worked inside Nintendo’s own projects. On Super Metroid (1994), made with R&D1, the Intelligent Systems staff were all programmers, and they worked with the game’s main designer on what the Super Famicom could display. It made Galactic Pinball for the Virtual Boy and the puzzle game Panel de Pon for the Super Famicom in 1995. In 1998 Edge reported that a sequel to Square’s Super Mario RPG was to be developed by Intelligent Systems for the 64DD disk drive; it reached the Nintendo 64 in 2000 as Paper Mario, the start of a series the company still makes.

Advance Wars

Advance Wars began, Nishimura told Edge, because Nintendo was too busy with the Game Boy Advance’s launch games and asked Intelligent Systems to share the work. Director Makoto Shimojo said the team aimed its bright, rounded look at young children, then found from the sales figures that it had mostly sold to teenage boys. It was the sixth game in the series and the first released outside Japan, and it came with a full tutorial, because the team had decided to make the game “really easy to play” even before an overseas release was planned. It came out in America in September 2001. Nintendo held back the British release until 2002, wary of a game with “war” in its title after the attacks of 11 September. Japan got it last, in November 2004, packaged with its sequel.

The reviews were among the best any handheld game had received. Edge called it “the closest the format has to perfection”, and in 2002 made Nintendo its developer of the year, counting Intelligent Systems, for Advance Wars and Mario Kart: Super Circuit, as part of Nintendo’s in-house talent. Super Circuit was the first Mario Kart not made by Nintendo alone. Looking back in 2013, Edge found something unexpected in all the company’s strategy games: they have “great rhythm”, and “none with as consummate a tempo as Advance Wars”.

Tools

The development-tool business runs alongside the games. The company’s history lists tools for the Game Boy in 1989 and the Super Famicom in 1990, then for the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, DSi, 3DS and New 3DS. In 1987 it set up a joint company with Nintendo, Tech, which it absorbed in 1997. Nintendo’s own interview pages describe Intelligent Systems as a company that develops Nintendo games and “software development support tools” for its systems.

Since 2003

Fire Emblem reached the West in 2003 with the Game Boy Advance game known there simply as Fire Emblem. From 2003 Intelligent Systems also worked on the WarioWare series of five-second microgames; Edge reported in 2005 that a 15-strong team from the company, led by art director Naoko Mori, collaborated with Nintendo’s developers. Later games included the puzzle game Pullblox, the company’s first 3DS game, and more Paper Mario games.

By the early 2010s Fire Emblem was in trouble. In a 2015 Iwata Asks interview, Nintendo’s producer Hitoshi Yamagami said that the team intended Fire Emblem: Awakening (2012) “to be the last in the series”, because Nintendo’s head of sales had told them the series “isn’t making the numbers”. Awakening sold well enough to change his mind. Awakening‘s director, Kohei Maeda of Intelligent Systems, told Edge that the series’ newcomer mode, in which fallen characters return, was there because many beginners stayed away thinking the games difficult, “so that those kinds of people could play Fire Emblem too”. The series has continued since with Fire Emblem Heroes for smartphones (2017), Three Houses (2019), Engage (2023) and Fortune’s Weave for the Nintendo Switch 2 (2026), alongside a remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (2024). The company moved into a new building in Minami-ku, Kyoto, in 2013.

Sources

Intelligent Systems, company pages on intsys.co.jp (Japanese; web): history (沿革), with the Iwasaki Giken department from 1983 and the games its founders worked on, the founding in December 1986 under Ryoichi Kitanishi, Tech Co., the games and development tools by year, Toshiyuki Nakamura as president from 2010 and the 2013 headquarters; company profile (会社概要), with staff numbers as of April 2026; vision and top message (the founders’ tools, and Tennis made by three students). https://www.intsys.co.jp/company/history.html
David Craddock, “How Super Smash Bros. Melee Introduced Fire Emblem to Western Audiences”, Shacknews, 3 February 2017 (web, secondary): Tohru Narihiro as founder, and the cartridge conversions. https://www.shacknews.com/article/98904/how-super-smash-bros-melee-introduced-fire-emblem-to-western-audiences
Kyoto Report, “Staff Credits – Fire Emblem (Famicom, 1990)” (web, secondary): producer, director, scenario, programmers, music and special thanks. http://kyoto-report.wikidot.com/fire-emblem-credits
Nintendo Dream, interview with four Famicom Disk System developers, September 2004 (see Nintendo R&D1): Hiroji Kiyotake starting Duck Hunt.
Nintendo Power, issue 87, August 1996, p. 62: Fire Emblem as a 1990 game “designed by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems”.
Retro Gamer Collection, volume 5, 2011, “The making of Super Metroid” (see Super Metroid): the Intelligent Systems programmers.
Retro Gamer, issue 102, May 2012, p. 45 (Galactic Pinball, 1995) and p. 83 (Paper Mario, 2000, and its sequels).
Edge, issue 54, January 1998, p. 29: Mario RPG 2 to be developed by Intelligent Systems for the 64DD.
Edge, issue 104, December 2001, p. 63: Advance Wars review, and its UK release set for 2002.
Edge, issue 110, May 2002, p. 52: Nintendo as developer of the year, with Intelligent Systems counted as in-house.
Edge, issue 127, September 2003, pp. 23 and 74: Advance Wars as “the best game available for the Game Boy Advance”; the series back to Famicom Wars in 1988.
Edge, issue 148, April 2005, pp. 60–61: the WarioWare team, Naoko Mori and the 15 Intelligent Systems staff.
Edge, issue 149, May 2005, pp. 89–92, “The Making of… Advance Wars”: Nishimura and Shimojo on the project, its audience, the tutorial and turn-based games abroad; the US, UK and Japanese releases.
Edge, issue 258, October 2013, p. 78: Advance Wars retrospective (“great rhythm”).
Edge, issue 237, February 2012, p. 129: Pullblox review (“Intelligent Systems’ 3DS debut”).
Edge, issue 261, Christmas 2013, pp. 68–71: Kohei Maeda on permadeath and Awakening’s newcomer mode.
Retro Gamer Collection, volume 4, 2010, p. 211: Mario Kart: Super Circuit as the first Mario Kart not handled exclusively by Nintendo.
Retro Gamer, issue 116, July 2013, p. 100: Fire Emblem: Awakening review; the series in Japan only until 2003.
Nintendo, Iwata Asks: Fire Emblem Fates, part 4, “It’s not a simple enemy/ally relationship” (2015; web): Awakening intended as the last in the series. https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-Fire-Emblem-Fates/Fire-Emblem-Fates/4-It-s-not-a-simple-enemy-ally-relationship-/4-It-s-not-a-simple-enemy-ally-relationship--1032072.html
Nintendo, “Ask the Developer Vol. 23: Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave — Part 1”, 15 September 2026 (web): the note describing Intelligent Systems, and the game’s developers. https://www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-23-fire-emblem-fortunes-weave-part-1/