Nintendo R&D

Nintendo Research & Development commonly abbreviated as Nintendo R&D was Nintendo’s oldest video game development team. During the 1970s, when Nintendo was still predominantly a toy company, they decided to expand into interactive entertainment and the video game industry. Several designers were hired to work under the Creative Department, which, at the time, was the only game development department within Nintendo. In 1972, the department was renamed to Research & Development and employed about 20 people.

Gunpei Yokoi was assigned as the general manager of the new division based on the success Nintendo had with his inventions and creations while a member of the Creative Department. Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi took notice of a toy that Yokoi created for his own amusement on his spare time during a routine factory visit. The toy was an extending arm and Yamauchi was looking to diversify Nintendo beyond their primary business of manufacturing hanafuda cards.

Yokoi was told to develop the toy he created into a product that could be mass-marketed for the 1966 holiday season. The toy was launched as the Ultra Hand and was a huge success, selling over 1.2 million units. Following the success of the Ultra Hand Yokoi was assigned to work on other toys including the Ten Billion Barrel puzzle, a miniature remote-controlled vacuum cleaner, a baseball pitching machine and a Love Tester.

In 1972 Gunpei Yokoi led Nintendo’s first electronics development team as they shifted focus to develop arcade style games, ultimately beginning Nintendo’s involvement in the video game industry. Most of the team’s arcade system games centered around light gun shooting simulations. The first being the “Laser Clay Shooting System” which consisted of an overhead projector which displayed moving targets behind a background as players fired at the targets with a rifle in which a mechanism of reflections would determine whether or not the “laser shot’ from the rifle hit the target.