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 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 Battletoads was developed by Rare and published by Tradewest, designed by Tim and Chris Stamper with a soundtrack by David Wise, and built with the explicit goal of giving Rare its own answer to the era’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles craze. It released on the NES in North America and Japan in June 1991,…
Introduction Double Dragon began as a 1987 arcade beat ’em up developed by Technos Japan and distributed by Taito, a spiritual successor to Technos’s earlier Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun that added two-player co-op and the ability to pick up and use a disarmed enemy’s own weapon, quickly becoming one of the genre’s foundational hits. Technos ported…
Introduction Ninja Gaiden was developed and published by Tecmo for the NES, directed by Hideo Yoshizawa with art by Masato Kato, released in Japan in December 1988 and in North America the following March. It ran in parallel with an unrelated arcade beat ’em up of the same name built by a different team, sharing…
Introduction Kirby’s Adventure was developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the NES in 1993, directed and designed once again by Masahiro Sakurai with lead programming by Hiroaki Suga and production input from Satoru Iwata, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Takao Shimizu. Sakurai had originally been asked simply to port the Game Boy original, Kirby’s…
Introduction Super Mario Bros. 3 was developed by Nintendo EAD under director Shigeru Miyamoto and lead designer Takashi Tezuka, with development beginning right after 1986’s Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels and running roughly two and a half years before its Japanese release in October 1988; North America had to wait until February 1990. Miyamoto…
Introduction Mega Man was developed and published by Capcom, released for the Famicom in Japan in December 1987 by a small six-person team working under a project supervisor who reportedly pushed for perfection in every detail despite the tight crew size. Fresh Capcom hire Keiji Inafune, credited on the game as ‘Inafuking,’ designed and illustrated…
Introduction Castlevania was developed and published by Konami, first released on the Famicom Disk System in Japan in September 1986 before reaching the NES on cartridge the following year, alongside a same-premise MSX2 sibling title called Vampire Killer that shipped with different level design around the same time. Character designer Akihiko Nagata built the game…
Introduction Donkey Kong began as a 1981 arcade platformer built by Nintendo R&D1 under Shigeru Miyamoto, assigned by Gunpei Yokoi to rework unsold Radar Scope cabinets into something with wider appeal. The result introduced a carpenter hero originally called Jumpman, his captured love interest Pauline, and the giant ape Donkey Kong, wrapped in some of…
Introduction Super Mario Bros is a side-scrolling platform game directed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka for Nintendo’s in-house R&D4 team, released for the Famicom in Japan in September 1985 and for the NES in North America shortly after. Miyamoto had joined Nintendo as an artist and toy designer and originally pitched a game built…