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Nintendo R&D1

Gunpei Yokoi's department

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Research and Development 1 was the Nintendo department led by Gunpei Yokoi. It grew out of the team behind Nintendo's toys and Game & Watch, and went on to make both hardware and games: Metroid and Kid Icarus on the Famicom, the Game Boy and its first games, and the Virtual Boy. Yokoi left in 1996, and public sources say the department was merged into a new division in 2004.

R&D1 built machines and wrote games for them. Under Gunpei Yokoi the same department that designed the Game Boy also wrote Metroid, Kid Icarus and Super Mario Land, and it spent the mid-1990s building the Virtual Boy, the failure that ended Yokoi’s time at the company. In 1994 Super Play described it as “a band of samurai”, in the words of a colleague outside Japan.

Fast facts

From toys to R&D1

The department began with Yokoi. He joined Nintendo to maintain its card-making machinery, and when Hiroshi Yamauchi set up a department to make games and toys, Yokoi’s Ultra Hand became its first hit. Magazine histories of the 1990s date his move into games to 1969; later histories date his hiring to 1965. Public sources do not agree on when the name “Research and Development 1” came into use, so no founding year is given here. Super Play explained in 1994 that Yamauchi had set up three development teams, labelled R&D 1 to 3, and that each worked on both hardware and software.

The Game & Watch handhelds came from Yokoi’s team from 1980. So did the idea behind them, which Yokoi called “lateral thinking of withered technology”: cheap, well-understood parts put to new uses. “The Nintendo way of adapting technology,” he told David Sheff, “is not to look for the state of the art but to utilize mature technology that can be mass-produced cheaply.” The multi-screen Donkey Kong Game & Watch of 1982 introduced the cross-shaped D-pad that Nintendo put on the NES controller and the Game Boy.

Famicom games

R&D1’s artists and designers drew for the Famicom by hand. Yoshio Sakamoto described in 2004 how, before digitisers, a picture was drawn on graph paper, laid over a grid of 16 by 16 LEDs and filled in square by square, with each colour chosen on a Famicom controller. He named Balloon Fight (1985) as the department’s first Famicom game, and worked on it and on Wrecking Crew the same year, though in the same interview Toru Osawa recalled that R&D1’s Hiroji Kiyotake had started on Duck Hunt (1984).

In 1986 the department made two games for the Famicom Disk System. Metroid came out on 6 August, with Yokoi as producer; its on-screen credits name Satoru Okada as chief director, while Retro Gamer names Yoshio Sakamoto as director, and the Metroid entry sets out the evidence. Retro Gamer describes Sakamoto setting out to make something unlike the games of Shigeru Miyamoto’s team. Kid Icarus followed in December, directed by Okada and designed by Toru Osawa, who told Nintendo Dream in 2004 that he had worked on it alone for most of the year, with an outside company writing the program, until the department finished Metroid and Sakamoto joined him. In 1995 Yokoi himself summed up the department’s software as “software for the Famicom and Super Famicom such as the Metroid series”.

The Game Boy

The Game Boy of 1989 was R&D1’s biggest success. In Sheff’s account, Yokoi’s 45-strong team “married the NES and Game & Watch”: a cartridge console small enough to carry, with a monochrome liquid-crystal screen. Nintendo’s own figures put the Game Boy family at 118.69 million units.

The department also wrote games for it. Wireframe describes Super Mario Land (1989) as the work of “Nintendo’s R&D1 squad, headed up by Game Boy designer Gunpei Yokoi”, with its aliens, Moai heads and a new princess, Daisy, and notes that Dr. Mario and both Super Mario Land sequels were also R&D1 games produced by Yokoi.

Super Metroid

Reviewing Super Metroid in 1994, Super Play said the game was “the work of none other than R&D 1, headed up by Gunpei Yokoi”, a team of more than 30 developers. The game was made with the developer Intelligent Systems. Sakamoto, who directed it, told Retro Gamer in 2011 that only three of the original Metroid team worked on it and that the rest of the Nintendo side were young trainees. Yokoi oversaw the project without working on it day to day, grew angrier as its deadline slipped, and, once it was finished, told other developers to go away and play it.

The Virtual Boy and Yokoi’s departure

The Virtual Boy was R&D1’s last machine under Yokoi. He told Edge in 1995 that about 60 people in R&D1 were working on it. It went on sale in Japan on 21 July 1995 and failed; Edge later reported shops selling its cartridges for ¥98.

In October 1996 Computer and Video Games reported that Yokoi had left Nintendo, without the reasons being revealed. Edge passed on a rumour that he had been “removed from active work within R&D1” after the Virtual Boy and had left because of it. He started his own company, Koto, and was killed in a road accident in October 1997.

After Yokoi

Sakamoto, who had joined Nintendo in 1982, stayed on and directed Metroid Fusion (2002) and Metroid: Zero Mission (2004), and by 2005 Edge described him as the manager of the software development department behind WarioWare. Public sources say that in 2004, under Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata, R&D1 and R&D2 were absorbed into a new Software Planning & Development division.

Sources

  • Super Play issue 20, June 1994, Super Metroid import review and feature: Yamauchi’s three teams labelled R&D 1 to 3; Super Metroid as the work of R&D 1 under Yokoi; a team of more than 30; “a band of samurai”.
  • David Sheff, Game Over (1993; GamePress edition, 1999): chapter 2, “In Heaven’s Hands” (Yokoi’s hiring, the Ultra Hand, Game & Watch and “mature technology”); “From Russia With Love” (the Game Boy and R&D1’s 45-strong team).
  • Edge issue 18, March 1995, Gumpei Yokoi interview: R&D1’s work, “the Metroid series”, and about 60 people on the Virtual Boy.
  • Edge issue 48, August 1997, “Where are they now?”: the Virtual Boy’s failure, cartridges at ¥98, and the rumour that Yokoi was “removed from active work within R&D1”.
  • Edge issue 148, April 2005: Sakamoto as manager of the department behind WarioWare.
  • Computer and Video Games issue 179, October 1996: Yokoi’s departure.
  • Retro Gamer issue 55, 2008, Game & Watch “Retroinspection”: “Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology” and the D-pad.
  • Retro Gamer Collection volume 4, 2010, “The complete history of Metroid”: Metroid on 6 August 1986, Sakamoto and Yokoi, and Metroid II. Volume 5, 2011, “The making of Super Metroid”: the team and Yokoi’s role.
  • Retro Gamer issue 102, 2012, p. 96: Satoru Okada as director of Kid Icarus. Issue 108, November 2012: the Virtual Boy’s debut on 21 July 1995. Issue 119, October 2013: Super Metroid, developed by Nintendo R&D1 and Intelligent Systems.
  • Nintendo Dream, interview with four Famicom Disk System developers, 6 and 21 September 2004 (Japanese; republished on Nintendo DREAM WEB, 21 February 2023): drawing with graph paper and LEDs, Balloon Fight as R&D1’s first Famicom game (Sakamoto), Kiyotake starting Duck Hunt (Osawa), Wrecking Crew, and the making of Kid Icarus. https://www.ndw.jp/disksystem-interview-230221/
  • Wireframe issue 69, December 2022: Super Mario Land, Dr. Mario and the Super Mario Land sequels as R&D1 games produced by Yokoi.
  • Kyoto Report, “Staff Credits – Metroid (NES, 1986)” (web, secondary): Satoru Okada as chief director. http://kyoto-report.wikidot.com/metroid-credits
  • Nintendo Co., Ltd., Investor Relations, “Dedicated Video Game Sales Units”: Game Boy family 118.69 million (web). https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/hard_soft/index.html
  • Wikipedia, “Nintendo Research & Development 1” (web, secondary): the 2004 merger into Software Planning & Development. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Research_%26_Development_1

See also

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