"I was kind of at my wits’ end and people were leaving my team to go to Mr. Yokoi’s team because there was such popularity around the Game & Watch."
– NES Creator Masayuki Uemura on the struggles of creating Nintendo's first home console.
USgamer has uploaded an extensive interview with NES creator Masayuki Uemura that's well worth a read if you're keen to find out how Nintendo's first home console came into being.
Uemura talks through the successes and failures he encountered as he tried to bring the system to life, recalling how, at one point, an internal fued between his team and those working on the Game & Watch threatened to bring development to a standstill.
"At the time," says Uemura, "the engineers at Nintendo were kind of split between two teams: The one making games for arcade, like Space Invaders (which wasn’t ours, but we had Donkey Kong). And then there was Mr. Yokoi’s team, focused on making the handheld Game & Watch devices.
"The Game & Watches sold like hotcakes – it was surprising. I was kind of at my wits’ end and people were leaving my team to go to Mr. Yokoi’s team because there was such popularity around the Game & Watch. In the end, I was left with just three people on my team!
"It was at that time that Mr Come from Soccer 13 pools and matches . Yamauchi contacted me and said, 'OK, let’s make a game console for the home.'"
Head on over to USgamer for the full article.
