Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development Division, often shortened to Nintendo EAD, was the biggest team at Nintendo responsible for creating video games. It was previously called Nintendo Research & Development No.4 Department, or Nintendo R&D4. Before EAD was formed, there was a group called the Creative Department, which included artists and designers who worked on many tasks. Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka were part of this group. Later, both became managers of EAD studios and were listed in every game the division made, though their roles varied. Nintendo EAD is most famous for creating games in the Donkey Kong, Mario, The Legend of Zelda, F-Zero, Star Fox, Animal Crossing, Pikmin, and Wii series.
After Nintendo's president, Satoru Iwata, passed away, the company reorganized. In September 2015, Nintendo EAD combined with the Software Planning & Development division to form a new team called Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development.
History
In the 1970s, Nintendo was mainly known for making toys. However, the company decided to expand into interactive entertainment and video games. Several designers were hired to work under the Creative Department, which was the only game development group at Nintendo at that time. Among these designers were Makoto Kano, who later created Game & Watch games, and Shigeru Miyamoto, who designed many Nintendo franchises. In 1972, the department was renamed to the Research & Development Department and had about 20 employees. Later, the department was combined into a division and split into three groups: Nintendo R&D1, R&D2, and R&D3.
Around 1983, Hiroshi Imanishi created a new development group called Research & Development No. 4 (Nintendo R&D4), which focused on making video games for home consoles. This group worked alongside the other departments in the Nintendo Manufacturing Division. Imanishi hired Hiroshi Ikeda, a former director at Toei Animation, as the general manager of R&D4, and Miyamoto as the chief producer. Other team members included Takashi Tezuka and Kenji Miki, graphic designers; Minoru Maeda, a designer; and Koji Kondo, Akito Nakatsuka, and Hirokazu Tanaka, sound designers.
Ikeda’s team had many creative ideas but needed help with programming. For example, the game Mario Bros., one of R&D4’s first projects, required support from Gunpei Yokoi and R&D1. Toshihiko Nakago, who had experience with the Family Computer (Nintendo’s home console), joined R&D4 after working with Masayuki Uemura’s R&D2 team to develop software tools for Nintendo consoles. When R&D2 and Nakago’s company, Systems Research and Development (SRD), began adapting arcade games for the Famicom, Miyamoto convinced Nakago and SRD to join R&D4 to help create Excitebike.
After Excitebike was released, R&D4 developed a Famicom version of the arcade game Kung-Fu Master, called Spartan X in Japan and Kung Fu elsewhere. This game improved features from Donkey Kong and marked an important step in the platform game genre. Their next project was Super Mario Bros., a sequel to Mario Bros. that set many standards for platform games and became a major success. Around the same time, The Legend of Zelda, an action-adventure game, was developed. The popularity of these games made Miyamoto well-known, and the department grew. Hideki Konno, Katsuya Eguchi, Kensuke Tanabe, and Takao Shimizu were hired and later became producers.
In 1989, one year before the Super Famicom was released, R&D4 became its own division called Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development (Nintendo EAD). The division had two departments: the Software Development Department, led by Miyamoto and focused on game creation, and the Technology Development Department, led by Takao Sawano and focused on programming tools. The Technology Department used engineers from R&D2 who had previously worked with SRD on software libraries. After F-Zero, the first game fully developed by EAD, the team collaborated with Argonaut Software to create the Super FX chip, which enabled 3D graphics in Super Famicom cartridges. As 3D gaming became more popular, EAD and SRD worked together on many 3D games.
In 1997, Miyamoto explained that about 20 to 30 employees worked on each Nintendo EAD project, and SRD was a group within EAD that originally came from Nintendo R&D2 and had about 200 programmers.
In June 2000, Nintendo’s board invited Miyamoto to join the company’s software development team, giving him responsibility for all Nintendo software projects, though he continued to work with EAD on games.
In 2002, Nintendo opened a new EAD branch in Tokyo to attract local talent, with Takao Shimizu as manager. Their first project was Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, a GameCube game that used the DK Bongos from Donkey Konga.
In 2004, due to a company restructuring, employees from R&D1 and R&D2 were moved to EAD, and the department was reorganized into a division with new managers and producers. Tezuka became deputy general manager, and Eiji Aonuma, Konno, Shimizu, Tadashi Sugiyama, and Katsuya Eguchi became producers leading their own teams. Keizo Ota and Yasunari Nishida were appointed project managers in the Technology Development Department.
In 2013, Eguchi was promoted to Department Manager of both Software Development Departments in Kyoto and Tokyo. He left his role as Group Manager of Software Development Group No. 2, which was then led by Hisashi Nogami. On June 18, 2014, the EAD Kyoto branch moved to the Nintendo Development Center in Kyoto, which housed over 1,100 developers from Nintendo’s internal research and development divisions, including EAD, SPD, IRD, and SDD.
On September 16, 2015, during a company restructuring following the death of president Satoru Iwata, EAD merged with Nintendo Software Planning & Development to form Entertainment Planning & Development (EPD).
Structure
The Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development (EAD) division was led by Takashi Tezuka, an experienced Nintendo employee who served as general manager. The division had two development departments: one in Kyoto, managed by Katsuya Eguchi as deputy general manager; and one in Tokyo, managed by Yoshiaki Koizumi as deputy general manager.
The Nintendo EAD Kyoto Software Development Department was the largest and one of the oldest research and development groups within Nintendo. It employed more than 700 video game developers. The department was originally located in the Nintendo Central Office in Kyoto, Japan. On June 28, 2014, it moved to the new Nintendo Development Center, which became the home for all of Nintendo’s internal research and development teams.
This department included some of Nintendo’s most well-known producers. These included Hideki Konno, who created the Nintendogs and Mario Kart series; Katsuya Eguchi, who worked on the Wii and Animal Crossing series; Eiji Aonuma, who developed The Legend of Zelda series; Hiroyuki Kimura, who created games like Big Brain Academy, Super Mario Bros., and Pikmin; and Tadashi Sugiyama, who worked on the Wii Fit, Steel Diver, and Star Fox series.
The department was managed by Katsuya Eguchi, an experienced Nintendo game designer. Later, Hisashi Nogami took over as the producer of the Animal Crossing franchise and led the creation of the Splatoon series.
The Nintendo EAD Tokyo Software Development Department was established in 2002 to attract new talent from Tokyo, where many developers preferred to live rather than move to Kyoto. The department is located in the Nintendo Tokyo Office in Tokyo, Japan.
In 2003, twenty employees from the Kyoto Entertainment Analysis & Development Division volunteered to move to the Tokyo Office to help expand development efforts. These employees were mostly from the Super Mario Sunshine team. Nintendo saw this as a chance to grow its team by hiring developers who preferred living in Tokyo.
Takao Shimizu (original manager and producer) and Yoshiaki Koizumi (director) hired new employees in Tokyo from companies such as SEGA, Koei, and Square-Enix. Together, they led their first project, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. In 2007, they released Super Mario Galaxy, a game that was both popular and well-received by critics. After this success, Koizumi was promoted to manager and producer and officially started Tokyo Software Development Group No. 2.
The Tokyo group was managed by Katsuya Eguchi, an experienced game developer who also oversaw operations at the Kyoto Software Development Department.