Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development Division, often shortened to Nintendo EAD, was the largest team at Nintendo responsible for creating video games. Before this, 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. Both later became managers of the EAD studios and were listed in every game made by the division, though their roles varied. Nintendo EAD is most famous for developing 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, the EAD division combined with Nintendo's Software Planning & Development division to form a new group called Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development.
History
During the 1970s, Nintendo was mainly a toy company. It decided to grow into the video game industry. The Creative Department, which was the only game development group at Nintendo, hired several designers. These included Makoto Kano, who later designed Game & Watch games, and Shigeru Miyamoto, who created many Nintendo game series. In 1972, the department was renamed the Research & Development Department. It had about 20 employees. Later, the department became a division and was split into three groups: Nintendo R&D1, R&D2, and R&D3.
Around 1983, Hiroshi Imanishi created a new department called Research & Development No. 4 (Nintendo R&D4). This group focused on making video games for home consoles. It worked alongside other departments in the Nintendo Manufacturing Division. Imanishi hired Hiroshi Ikeda, a former director at Toei Animation, as the department’s manager, and Miyamoto as its 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 ideas but needed help with programming. For example, the game Mario Bros., one of the group’s first projects, required support from Gunpei Yokoi and R&D1. Toshihiko Nakago knew about the chipset for the Family Computer, Nintendo’s home console. He had originally worked with Masayuki Uemura’s R&D2 to create software tools for Nintendo consoles. When R&D2 and Nakago’s company, Systems Research and Development (SRD), began moving games from arcade machines to the Famicom, Miyamoto persuaded Nakago and SRD to join R&D4 to help develop Excitebike.
After Excitebike was released, R&D4 made a version of the arcade game Kung-Fu Master for the Famicom, called Spartan X in Japan and Kung Fu elsewhere. This game improved features from Donkey Kong and was an important step for the platform game genre. Their next project was Super Mario Bros., a sequel they created themselves. This game set standards for platform games and became a major success. Around the same time, The Legend of Zelda, an action adventure game, was developed. The success of these games made Miyamoto famous and allowed the department to grow. 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 in Japan, 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, which focused on making video games, and the Technology Development Department, led by Takao Sawano, which focused on programming and tools. The technology department used engineers from R&D2 who had helped SRD with software libraries. After F-Zero, the first game fully programmed by EAD, the team worked with Argonaut Software to create the Super FX chip. This chip allowed Super Famicom cartridges to use 3D graphics. As 3D games became popular, EAD grew and worked with SRD on many 3D games.
In 1997, Miyamoto explained that about 20 to 30 employees worked on each Nintendo EAD game during development. SRD, a company within EAD, was formally part of Nintendo R&D2’s software unit and had about 200 programmers.
In June 2000, Nintendo’s board invited Miyamoto to join the company. He took responsibility for all of Nintendo’s software development but continued to work with EAD on games.
In 2002, Nintendo opened a branch of EAD in Tokyo to attract talent who did not want to move to Kyoto. Takao Shimizu was appointed manager. Their first project was Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, a GameCube game that used the DK Bongos from Donkey Konga.
In 2004, Nintendo restructured, moving employees from R&D1 and R&D2 to EAD. The department became a division and added 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 became the manager of both Software Development Departments in Kyoto and Tokyo. He left his role as group manager of Software Development Group No. 2, and Hisashi Nogami replaced him. On June 18, 2014, the EAD Kyoto branch moved to the Nintendo Development Center in Kyoto. The building housed more than 1,100 developers from Nintendo’s research and development divisions, including EAD, SPD, IRD, and SDD.
On September 16, 2015, during a restructuring after 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 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 at Nintendo. It employed more than 700 video game developers. The department was originally located in Kyoto, Japan, at the Nintendo Central Office. On June 28, 2014, it moved to the new Nintendo Development Center in Kyoto, 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 games like Nintendogs and Mario Kart; 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 Wii Fit, Steel Diver, and Star Fox.
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 was responsible for creating the Splatoon series.
The Nintendo EAD Tokyo Software Development Department was established in 2002 to attract new talent from Tokyo, Japan, who might not want to move far from the city to Kyoto. It is located in the Nintendo Tokyo Office.
In 2003, twenty employees from the Kyoto Entertainment Analysis & Development Division volunteered to move to the Tokyo Office to help expand development resources. These employees were mostly from the Super Mario Sunshine team. Nintendo saw this as a chance to grow and hire more developers who preferred living in Tokyo.
Takao Shimizu, the original manager and producer, and Yoshiaki Koizumi, the director, began hiring new employees in Tokyo from companies like 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 critically and commercially successful. After this, Koizumi was promoted to manager and producer and officially started Tokyo Software Development Group No. 2.
The Tokyo group was managed by Katsuya Eguchi, a veteran game developer, who also oversaw operations at the Kyoto Software Development Department.