Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the NES and SNES, has died age 78Uemura joined Nintendo in 1972 and

Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the NES and SNES, has died age 78

Uemura joined Nintendo in 1972 and originally helped develop physical light gun games for the company, including the Laser Clay Shooting System which was popular in Japanese arcades in the early ’70s.

When Nintendo was divided into separate research and development divisions, Uemura was put in charge of R&D2, the division responsible for creating Nintendo’s hardware, where he led development of its four Color TV-Game consoles. These were dedicated devices with games built in.

One night in 1981, Uemura received a phone call from Nintendo’s president Hiroshi Yamauchi. In an Iwata Asks interview in 2010, Uemura explained that the Game & Watch, created by Gunpei Yokoi‘s team at Nintendo R&D1, was Nintendo’s most popular product at the time.