He had a spectacular career.
We’ve lost a real one. Masayuki Uemura was responsible for much of the work that went into creating both the Famicom/NES and Super Famicom/SNES. And on the 9th, news of his passing was given by Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, where he had been a professor since retiring from Nintendo in 2004. He was 78 years old.
Uemura joined Nintendo as an engineer fresh from a job at Sharp in 1972. Back then, Nintendo was just beginning their foray into electronic entertainment, and one of Uemura’s first roles was in the development of Nintendo’s range of light gun games. He did well at the company, and when Nintendo R&D2 was created, he was given charge of the department.
It was from there that he would design the Color TV-Game systems; early television games with built-in titles. When 1981 rolled around, he began work on the Famicom, which followed the demands of then-president of Nintendo Hiroshi Yamauchi: that it be a cartridge-based system capable of playing arcade games on TV. Needless to say, it was a success, and essentially ended the 80’s games crash once introduced in North America as the NES.
Nintendo R&D2 were also behind the development of the Zapper light gun and Famicom Disk System. They went on to build the Super Famicom/SNES, as well as its Satellaview add-on.
Uemura himself was also no stranger to the games on these systems. He served as producer for several titles, including the likes of Soccer, Baseball, Golf, Clu Clu Land, and Ice Climber.
Needless to say, the number of people that had reverence for Uemura is great. Notably, Masahiro Sakurai, the mind behind Kirby and Super Smash Bros., tweeted the following:
It has been announced that Masayuki Uemura, the creator of the Family Computer, has passed away. I pray for your soul … NES is the game console that I was most influenced by. Without this, it wouldn’t be there.
Source: Nintendo Life
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