Background In 1965,
Nintendo, still primarily a
hanafuda card manufacturer, hired
Gunpei Yokoi, a newly graduated electronics engineer. Yokoi was assigned to the manufacturing division to work on the
assembly line machines used to manufacture its cards. In the following year,
Hiroshi Yamauchi, president of Nintendo at the time, during a visit to the factory Yokoi was working at, took notice of a toy, an extending
arm, that Yokoi had made for his own amusement during his spare time. As Yamauchi was looking to diversify the company's business far beyond its primary card business, Yokoi was ordered to develop the toy into a proper mass-market product for the 1966 holiday rush. The toy was launched as
Ultra Hand, and became a huge success, selling over 1.2 million units during its lifetime. Following that, Yokoi was assigned to work on other toys, namely the
Ten Billion Barrel puzzle, a miniature remote-controlled vacuum cleaner called the
Chiritori, a baseball throwing machine called the
Ultra Machine, and a "
Love Tester", a novelty device designed to show how much two people loved each other.
1970s-1978: Creation and first electronic games Sometime before 1972, Nintendo created its first electronics development team, the Research & Development department from Nintendo's manufacturing division, assigning
Gunpei Yokoi as its general manager. By 1972 the department had approximately 20 developers. In 1978, the manufacturing division split its single research & development department into two, renaming it to Research & Development No. 1 (R&D1) and creating the
Nintendo Research & Development No. 2 (R&D2) department. After the split, Yokoi remained general manager of R&D1.
1979-1988: Game & Watch In the late 1970s, Yokoi saw a bored Japanese
salaryman playing with a
calculator on the
Shinkansen high-speed train. This was the inspiration for the creation of the
Game & Watch series, a line of
handheld electronic games, with each system featuring a single game to be played on an
LCD screen in addition to a clock, an alarm, or both. Regardless, it was confirmed that Yokoi was inspired by calculators to develop the line, even using calculator
integrated circuits in the systems and
button cells to power them. From then on, all major
video game consoles since have had a D-pad of some shape on their controllers, until the
Nintendo Switch in 2017.
1989-1990: Game Boy , the highly-successful handheld video game console When the department started working on a successor to the
Game & Watch series, Yokoi envisioned a simple and cheap system with interchangeable
game cartridges. Development of the system, however, suffered from disagreements in direction, with assistant director
Satoru Okada arguing for a more powerful system with third-party development and long-term support from Nintendo, emulating the successful business model that
Nintendo R&D2 had achieved with the
Nintendo Entertainment System, while Yokoi planned for a much cheaper, less powerful device with a shorter life-span, similar to its predecessor. During an interview, Okada compared the initial project to the
Microvision. Eventually, Yokoi agreed to Okada's plan and the project would be known as the
Game Boy.
1991-1994: Virtual Boy , developed by R&D1, emulates 3-D visuals by use of individual red monochrome displays for each eye. It was considered a commercial failure. In 1991, Nintendo partnered with Massachusetts-based Reflection Technology, Inc. who had developed a 3D stereoscopic
head-tracking prototype called the Private Eye. Gunpei Yokoi saw this as a unique technology that competitors would find difficult to emulate. Additionally, the resulting game console was intended to enhance Nintendo's reputation as an innovator and to "encourage more creativity" in games. Code-naming the project "VR32", Spending four years in development and eventually building a dedicated manufacturing plant in China, retailing for more than .
1995: Game Boy successor In 1995, the department started developing a successor to the Game Boy, under the code-name
Atlantis. Despite its predecessors having a
monochrome display, the R&D1 team had already experimented with
color displays from as early as 1992. The
Atlantis prototype consisted of an handheld with a
32-bit ARM7 CPU, a larger
color display, and four face buttons. It was reported that the system was supposed to release in late 1996. Meanwhile, the department was also working on a revision of the Game Boy. The system would require fewer batteries, providing approximately 10 hours of gameplay, and was also equipped with a
DC connector which could be used to power the system. The screen was also changed to a true black-and-white display, rather than the green-tinted
monochrome display of the original Game Boy, and had an improved pixel response-time, mostly eliminating the
ghosting effect. It finally released as the
Game Boy Pocket on July 21, 1996, in Japan, on September 3 in North America, and in Europe during the following year. Although it had no power LED initially, it was soon added to later editions due public demand. Following the commercial success of the Game Boy Pocket, the
Atlantis system was delayed by a year to late 1997. Nonetheless, the system was eventually cancelled due to concerns of it being too big, having a drastically decreased battery life (to approximately 1 hour, as LCD color displays required a back-light at the time), and being too expensive to manufacture.
1996-2003: Gunpei Yokoi's departure and hardware team spin-off On August 15, 1996, long-time department general manager, Gunpei Yokoi, left Nintendo to form his own company, Koto Laboratory. Despite speculation that he had left Nintendo due to the commercial failure of the
Virtual Boy a year prior, Yokoi clarified that he'd long wished to become independent. Yokoi and his new company eventually worked on the
WonderSwan handheld for
Bandai before his tragic death in 1997 in a traffic accident. In order to fill Yokoi's vacancy, long-time Nintendo engineer Takehiro Izushi was appointed as the new general manager of the department. Additionally, the department's hardware team was spun-off into a new development department, called
Nintendo Research & Engineering and led by
Satoru Okada. The software development team, however, remained at R&D1. This new department would be responsible for continuing the
Game Boy's legacy becoming the source of every major Nintendo
handheld game console until its closure in 2012. Following Yokoi's departure, and no longer having a dedicated hardware development team, the department focused instead on developing games for other Nintendo-developed consoles. It was responsible for the re-releases of its
Game & Watch classics in the
Game & Watch Gallery series for both the Game Boy and Game Boy Color, starting in 1997. It also developed sequels to its Wario Land classic in the form of
Wario Land II, released in 1998, and
Wario Land 3, in 2000, both for the Game Boy Color, and
Wario Land 4 for the
Game Boy Advance, released a year later. The department was also responsible for creating the
Wario spin-off series with
WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames!, released in 2003 for the Game Boy Advance. After an 8-year hiatus, R&D1 introduced a new installment in its Metroid series,
Metroid Fusion, released in 2002. In 2004, R&D1's last project was launched,
Metroid: Zero Mission a remake of the original game.
2004: Absorbed into Nintendo Software Planning & Development In 2004, the department, along with
Nintendo Research & Development 2, was absorbed into the newly created
Nintendo Software Planning & Development division. Then-Nintendo president
Satoru Iwata created and appointed himself as general manager of the new division to focus on co-producing and supervising second-party development, thus relieving the
Entertainment Analysis & Development division (EAD) and its general manager
Shigeru Miyamoto to focus on first-party projects. Although that was the division's primary focus, it went on to develop some video games titles internally. In 2018, former general manager of the R&D1 department Takehiro Izushi retired from Nintendo after 43 years in the company. == Products developed ==