Introduction Mega Man 5 was directed by Ichiro Mihara and produced by Tokuro Fujiwara, with Keiji Inafune once again handling character design, and released in Japan in December 1992 as part of Capcom’s continued annual cadence for the series. Rather than reinvent the formula, the team focused on refinement, again running a public design contest…
Introduction Mega Man 4 was developed and published by Capcom, produced by Tokuro Fujiwara with Keiji Inafune continuing on as character designer, and released in Japan in December 1991 under the studio’s push for annual sequels following the series’ continued commercial success, reaching North America the following month. The biggest gameplay addition was the Mega…
Introduction Life Force was developed and published by Konami, originating as the 1986 arcade shoot ’em up Salamander, a spin-off of the studio’s hit Gradius built instead of an immediate direct sequel and released internationally under the Life Force name. Rather than a straight arcade port, Konami used the NES conversion, which reached Japan in…
Introduction River City Ransom was developed and published by Technos Japan, directed by Mitsuhiro Yoshida and Hiroyuki Sekimoto with music by Kazuo Sawa, and released in Japan in April 1989 as the first game the studio built specifically for a home console rather than adapting from arcades. It’s the third entry in the Kunio-kun series…
Introduction Mega Man 3 was developed by Capcom and released in Japan in September 1990 and North America that November, arriving under a troubled production: original director Akira Kitamura had left the company, and his replacement, programmer Masahiko Kurokawa, clashed with the rest of the team over the series’ direction badly enough that lead artist…
Introduction Balloon Fight was developed by Nintendo together with HAL Laboratory, produced by Gunpei Yokoi, designed by Yoshio Sakamoto, and programmed in part by a young Satoru Iwata in one of his earliest collaborations with Nintendo before he went on to lead the company as its president. It debuted as the arcade cabinet VS. Balloon…
Introduction Ice Climber was developed by Nintendo R&D1, directed by Kenji Miki with Masayuki Uemura and Shigeru Miyamoto producing, and programmed by Kazuaki Morita and Toshihiko Nakago, releasing in Japan in January 1985 and reaching North America that October on both the NES and the arcade VS. System. It came right after the same core…
Introduction Blaster Master was developed and published by Sunsoft, a studio better known during the 8- and 16-bit era for licensed tie-in games, with directors Hiroaki Higashiya and Koichi Kitazumi, designer Kenji Sada, and composer Naoki Kodaka leading a small team of around five people on what became the company’s one original flagship franchise. It…
Introduction Wrecking Crew was developed by Nintendo R&D1, directed by Satoru Okada and produced by Gunpei Yokoi, with designer Yoshio Sakamoto building his first game after a stint as a pixel artist around a simple idea: a puzzle-action game about demolishing walls. It debuted as an arcade cabinet on the Nintendo VS. System in 1984…
Introduction Kid Icarus was developed by Nintendo R&D1 with outside assistance from Tose, directed by Satoru Okada with Yoshio Sakamoto co-directing and streamlining much of the design, and produced by Gunpei Yokoi, arriving on the Famicom Disk System in Japan in December 1986 before an NES cartridge release the following July. The team picked up…
Introduction Bomberman traces back to a 1983 original created by programmer Yuji Tanaka for Hudson Soft, a Sapporo-based company that had started out selling art supplies and telecommunications gear before moving into home computers and eventually games. This 1985 Famicom/NES version, reportedly ported single-handedly by Shinichi Nakamoto over a marathon 72-hour stretch, is widely considered…
Introduction Duck Hunt was developed by Nintendo R&D1, the mostly hardware-focused team also behind the NES Zapper light gun itself, with Shigeru Miyamoto directing, Gunpei Yokoi producing, and Hiroji Kiyotake handling the game’s graphics and character designs. It first appeared in Japan in April 1984 for the Famicom and as an arcade cabinet, before becoming…