Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development

commonly abbreviated as Nintendo EAD and formerly known as Nintendo Research & Development No.4 Department (abbreviated as Nintendo R&D4), was the largest software development division within the Japanese video game company Nintendo. It was preceded by the Creative Department, a team of designers with backgrounds in art responsible for many different tasks, to which Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka originally belonged. Both served as managers of the EARD studios and were credited in every game developed by the division, with varying degrees of involvement. Nintendo EAD was best known for its work on games in the Donkey Kong, Mario, The Legend of Zelda, F-Zero, Star Fox, Animal Crossing, Pikmin, and Wii series.

Following a large company restructuring after the death of company president Satoru Iwata, the division merged with Nintendo's Software Planning & Development division in September 2015, becoming Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development.

History

Background

During the 1970s, when Nintendo was still predominantly a toy company, it 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. Among these new designers were Makoto Kano, who went on to design various Game & Watch games, and Shigeru Miyamoto, who would create various Nintendo franchises. In 1972, the department was renamed to Research & Development Department; it had about 20 employees. The department was later consolidated into a division and separated into three groups, Nintendo R&D1, R&D2 and R&D3.

1980–1989: Creation as Research & Development 4

thumb|left|The success of [[Shigeru Miyamoto's Donkey Kong arcade game was a deciding factor in the creation of Nintendo R&D4.]]

Circa 1983, Hiroshi Imanishi oversaw the creation of Research & Development No. 4 Department (commonly abbreviated to Nintendo R&D4), as a new development department dedicated to developing video games for home consoles, complementing the other three existing departments in the Nintendo Manufacturing Division. Imanishi appointed Hiroshi Ikeda, a former director at Toei Animation, as general manager of the newly created department, and Miyamoto as its chief producer. Also hired were Takashi Tezuka and Kenji Miki, graphic designers, Minoru Maeda, a designer, and Koji Kondo, Akito Nakatsuka, and Hirokazu Tanaka, all sound designers.

Ikeda's creative team had many ideas, but lacked the programming skills to put them into action. Mario Bros., one of the unit's first games, required assistance in this regard from Gunpei Yokoi and R&D1. Toshihiko Nakago was familiar with the chipset for the Family Computer, Nintendo's contemporary home console, as he was originally hired to work with Masayuki Uemura's Nintendo R&D2 to develop software development kits for Nintendo consoles. When R&D2 and Systems Research and Development, Nakago's company, began porting R&D1-developed arcade games to the Famicom, Shigeru Miyamoto lured him and SRD to R&D4 to help develop Excitebike.

Following the release of Excitebike, R&D4 developed a Famicom port of the beat 'em up arcade game Kung-Fu Master, called Spartan X in Japan and Kung Fu everywhere else. The game improved on features introduced in Donkey Kong, representing a key step in the life of the platform game genre. Their next game was Super Mario Bros., a self-developed sequel to Mario Bros. The game standardized many aspects of the platform genre, and went on to be a critical and commercial success. Developed concurrently, but released a year later, was The Legend of Zelda, an action adventure game. The phenomenal sales of Mario and Zelda made Miyamoto a household name, The division was comprised into two departments: the Software Development Department, which focused on video game development and was led by Miyamoto, and the Technology Development Department, which focused on programming and developing tools and was led by Takao Sawano. The technology department relied on R&D2 engineers who assisted SRD with software libraries. Following the release of F-Zero, the first video game fully programmed by EAD, they collaborated with Argonaut Software to develop the Super FX, a chip which, when placed in Super Famicom cartridges, enabled the use of 3D graphics. As 3D gaming became more prominent, so, too, did the department, programming several of Nintendo EAD's 3D games with SRD.

In 1997, Miyamoto explained that about twenty to thirty employees were devoted to each Nintendo EAD title during the course of its development, and that SRD was a company within the division, formally Nintendo R&D2's software unit, and was composed of about 200 programmers. Tezuka became deputy general manager, and Eiji Aonuma, Konno, Shimizu, Tadashi Sugiyama, and Katsuya Eguchi became producers overseeing their own development teams. Keizo Ota and Yasunari Nishida were appointed project managers of their own groups in the Technology Development Department.

In 2013, Eguchi was promoted to Department Manager of both Software Development Departments in Kyoto and Tokyo. As such, he left his role as Group Manager of Software Development Group No. 2, and was replaced by Hisashi Nogami. On June 18, 2014, the EAD Kyoto branch was moved from the Nintendo Central Office to the Nintendo Development Center in Kyoto. The building housed more than 1100 developers from all of Nintendo's internal research and development divisions, which included the Nintendo EAD, SPD, IRD and SDD divisions.

On September 16, 2015, during a restructuring overshadowed by the recent death of president Satoru Iwata, EAD merged with Nintendo Software Planning & Development, forming Entertainment Planning & Development (EPD).

Structure

The Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development division was headed by Nintendo-veteran Takashi Tezuka who acted as general manager. The division was divided in two development departments: one in Kyoto, with Katsuya Eguchi acting as its deputy general manager; and one in Tokyo, with Yoshiaki Koizumi acting as its deputy general manager.

Kyoto Software Development Department

thumb|150px|[[Katsuya Eguchi, Deputy General Manager of the Nintendo EAD division in Kyoto]]

The Nintendo EAD Kyoto Software Development Department was the largest and one of the oldest research and development departments within Nintendo, housing more than 700 video game developers. It was located in Kyoto, Japan, formerly in the Nintendo Central Office, but on June 28, 2014, it was relocated to the new Nintendo Development Center, which housed all of Nintendo's internal research and development divisions.

The development department integrated Nintendo's most notable producers: Hideki Konno, producer of the Nintendogs and Mario Kart series; Katsuya Eguchi, producer of the Wii and Animal Crossing series; Eiji Aonuma, producer of The Legend of Zelda series; Hiroyuki Kimura, producer of the Big Brain Academy, Super Mario Bros., and Pikmin series; and Tadashi Sugiyama, producer of the Wii Fit, Steel Diver and Star Fox series.

The department was managed by veteran Nintendo game designer Katsuya Eguchi. As such, Hisashi Nogami later succeeded him as the producer of the Animal Crossing franchise and was responsible for the creation of the Splatoon series.

{| class="wikitable sortable"

|+ List of video games developed by the Nintendo EAD Software Development Department in Kyoto

! scope="col" |

! scope="col" | Title

! scope="col" | Genre(s)

! scope="col" | Platform(s)

! scope="col" | Producer(s)

! scope="col" class="unsortable" |

|-

! scope="row" rowspan="1" | 1984

| Excitebike

| Racing

| Nintendo Entertainment System

| Shigeru Miyamoto

|-

! scope="row" rowspan="2" | 1985

| Kung-Fu

| Beat 'em up

| Nintendo Entertainment System

| Shigeru Miyamoto

|-

| Super Mario Bros.

| Platform

| Nintendo Entertainment System

| Shigeru Miyamoto

|-

! scope="row" rowspan="3" | 1986

| The Legend of Zelda

| Action-adventure

| Family Computer Disk System Nintendo Entertainment System

| Shigeru Miyamoto

|-

| The Mysterious Murasame Castle

| Action-adventure

| Family Computer Disk System

| Keizo Kato

|-

| Super Mario Bros. 2

| Platform

| Family Computer Disk System

| Shigeru Miyamoto

|-

! scope="row" rowspan="4" | 1987

| Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

| Action role-playing

| Family Computer Disk System Nintendo Entertainment System

| Shigeru Miyamoto

|-

| Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic

| Platform

| Family Computer Disk System

| Shigeru Miyamoto

|-

| Famicom Mukashibanashi: Shin Onigashima

| Adventure, visual novel

| Family Computer Disk System

| Hiroshi Ikeda Shigeru Miyamoto

|-

| Famicom Grand Prix: F-1 Race

| Racing

| Family Computer Disk System

| Shigeru Miyamoto

|-

! scope="row" rowspan="3" | 1988

| Famicom Grand Prix II: 3D Hot Rally

| Racing

| Family Computer Disk System

| Shigeru Miyamoto

|-

| Ice Hockey

| Sports

| Family Computer Disk System Nintendo Entertainment System

| Shigeru Miyamoto Masayuki Uemura

|-

| Super Mario Bros. 3

| Platform

| Nintendo Entertainment System

| Shigeru Miyamoto

|-

! scope="row" rowspan="1" | 1989

| Famicom Mukashibanashi: Yūyūki

| Adventure, visual novel

| Family Computer Disk System

| Shigeru Miyamoto

|-

! scope="row" rowspan="3" | 1990

| Super Mario World

| Platform

| Super Nintendo Entertainment System

| Shigeru Miyamoto

|-

| F-Zero

| Racing

| Super Nintendo Entertainment System

| Shigeru Miyamoto