Masayuki Uemura, the Nintendo engineer who designed the Famicom or “Familia”, as the popular console and its clones were known in Argentina, He died this Monday at the age of 78. He was also the creator of the hit Super nintendo.
The news was known this Thursday. Uemura is one of the great names of the Japanese company, which during the 80s and 90s experienced one of the most popular moments in history. With Gunpei Yokoi and Genyo Takeda, is part of the team that led Nintendo to the top of the video game industry.
One of his early roles was helping with Nintendo’s range of location-based light weapon games. The Famicom, short for “Family Computer”, was the system that would become the NES in the West, was the 8-bit console which Uemura designed and was a hit in Japan. Due to its great scope, it arrived a year later in North America and Europe, under the name of NES: Nintendo Entertainment System.
Various cloned versions arrived in Argentina, that is, unofficial versions of the console. Popularly he began to say “The family”, in reference to its original name.
This console had iconic titles like The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, or Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3, two of the best sellers in the history of the company, as well as classics from other companies such as Tetris, Pacman, Megaman and the entire range of Mario games that emerged from the outright commercial success that Nintendo had created.
From Sharp to Nintendo and the scarf that inspired the Famicom
The original Japanese Famicom. In the West it was called “NES. Photo Wikimedia Commons
His first steps in the technology industry were in Sharp, one of the largest Japanese electronics manufacturers in the world, known for its televisions. Uemura became part of Nintendo in 1972, where he worked with who he was at that time the president, a Nintendo icon, Hiroshi Yamauchi.
A funny anecdote anchors the origins of the console to a drunkenness. “It all started with a phone call in 1981. President Yamauchi told me about a video game console that could be played with cartridges, “he told the specialized media Kotaku.” He always liked to call me after having a few drinks, so I didn’t think about it too much. I just said ‘sure, boss,’ and hung up. “The next day, Yamauchi was completely sober and wanted a serious project.
The process that Uemura undertook to build the first NES was to buy all the consoles of the moment and analyze the components for six months. It is worth clarifying, the market was saturated with consoles at that time and none came to have the success of the Famicom.
“The development of the Famicom started in the right moment, when manufacturers began to be able to customize components and circuits“, it affirmed.
Super Mario Bros. 3 was released in 1988 on the Famicom (NES). Photo Capture Nintendo Switch
All the design had to be done with Yamauchi breathing on the back of his neck. The demanding president of Nintendo knew he had to make a perfect product, and Uemura was up to the task.
The other curious fact associated with the NES is that its original design appears from a scarf. Red was the color of a garment that Yamauchi liked, and Uemura understood that he had to have a wink at his boss. He was not mistaken: Red is the color that has identified Nintendo for decades.
The success of the console began to be visible when Nintendo had to fulfill thousands of requests for repairs due to the amount of use that players put into the machine. Back then, when the Famicom was already an absolute hit in Japan, Uemura was working on the western NES and on the Disk System, a project that had some games like Mario Golf, which allowed to load scores in machines to compete around Japan: an advance to the current online multiplayer.
Super Nintendo, the other milestone of Uemura
Masayuki Uemura at a video game exhibition. Photo Twitter
Uemura’s success didn’t stop at the NES alone. In 1988 he began designing the 16-bit successor to the Famicom, the Super Famicom, or Super Nintendo in the West.
To carry it out, he worked with Ken Kutaragi, a giant name in the video game industry: he was in charge of the excellent chipset that handled the sound, one of the strongest features of the console along with its huge palette of 32,786 colors. Later Kutaragi, would create the Playstation for Sony.
In 2004, Uemura would retire from the company, going to work as a professor and researcher in subjects related to video games at Ritsumeikan University, in Kyoto, Japan. Undoubtedly one of the great names of the company, with Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario’s father, that will remain in history forever.
Famicom sold 61 million units. Super Nintendo, 49 million.
Masayuki Uemura, father of the “Family” and Super Nintendo, died. Photo Twitter
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