“Nintendo sold a toy for children and a plaything for adults.”

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Attract Mode

6 min readDec 10, 2021

Made another visit to NYU Game Center last night, to see another very special guest speaker. Last time it was to see Jason Scott, a man who is seeking to preserve gaming’s past via the Internet Achieve. This time it was to see Masayuki Uemura, a man who is literally one of the chief architects of gaming’s past, as well present and even future.

It was a packed house, filled with assorted game journos, and some of their reports have already been filed and readily available. So, much like last time, I’m just going to share my the tidbits I found most noteworthy.

- For starters, things kicked off with a hearty laugh as a Windows Update interrupted Uemura’s presentation…

- Thankfully the technical hiccup was easily taken care of, and what followed was a brief run down of Nintendo’s pre-digital roots, which is quite extensive, as a playing card and toy maker (which they still dabble in today). The path towards creating a video game machine was filled with many twists and turns, though the destination was not entirely surprising.

Uemura discussed the challenges he faced when creating and assembling the various components that formed the Famicom. The one technical aspect I was most interested in learning about the console’s audio output; up till that point, there really wasn’t any dedicate sound chips, given that “there was no need for beautiful sounds at the arcade”.

Uemura knew that audio in a home system would be most important, where there would be no distractions. Plus players would have to hear the same audio, over and over again.

- About that name; it was originally the Family Computer and not the Famicom (which I guess is hardly a shocker, given that it plainly says “Family Computer” on the thing itself). The idea of using the term computer in the name was rooted in the belief that the video game console moniker would be a real mark against the machine, especially due to the 2600 crashing and burning in the West around that time.

Also in the West, personal computers were starting to catch on, and became poised to be the new defacto means of games being played at home. Uemura was familiar with the term personal computers, but not home computers, which was becoming super popular. So he came up with Family Computer, which led to his life combining the two words and creating the name Famicom. Which was rejected by the higher ups at Nintendo.

But shortly after its launch, everyone started calling it the Famicom, because “Japan loves acronyms” (and not just Uemura’s wife).

- The Famicom was kind of a bust in Japan at first, believe it or not. Which was a good thing, because otherwise Nintendo would have never considered bringing it to America; up to that point, they did so well in their backyard with assorted products, there was no need to. Though as already touched upon, and as everyone already knows, bringing a new video game console to market at a time in which everyone was sick of the 2600 was a risky move.

The success of Donkey Kong ended up being a real motivator for western expansion, no big shocker there. And many folks already that the Famicom arrived in the States ahead of the NES’s debut in the form of arcade hardware, by forming the innards of Nintendo’s Vs. platform. Which again was not popular in Japan. Why? Cuz Vs. games emphasized multiplayer action, which Japanese gamers didn’t like, whereas American ate up like candy.

What was surprising was hearing that the ability to swap out games in each Vs machine (much like a console) was something Nintendo of America came up with themselves, without permission. And which Nintendo of Japan was not thrilled with, but the end result was making Nintendo’s various arcade games super popular. Enough to further entertain the idea of going ahead with a home machine.

- Again, they had to be mindful of the negative rep that consoles had, thanks to the 2600 and others crashing and burning. Hence why the Famicom was redesigned to look like one of home electronics’s biggest sensations at the time, a VCR (an idea that again originated in the States). The cross pad that everyone knows and loves also helped to differentiate Nintendo’s new machine further, cuz it certainly didn’t look like no stinking joystick…

- A debate that’s popped up recently, mostly due to the 30th anniversary of Super Mario Bros, is the exact release date of the game in America. Many have discovered that it wasn’t a launch title for the NES like everyone assumed it was, and Uemura added validity to such a fact by noting how Duck Hunt was the original system seller. How come? Cuz the Zapper, given how us Americans love our guns (which got an even bigger laugh than the Microsoft Update pop up)…

- In the Q&A that followed Uemura’s presentation, he was asked what his original career goals were, given that he basically stumbled upon a job in video games at Nintendo. The answer: he originally wanted to work in film and audio, hence why he had his sight at Sony. “I wonder what would have happened there!” he noted, with a chuckle…

- Uemura also spoke about the long hours he and his colleagues worked. Though it wasn’t a complaint, and because Nintendo paid for one’s meals if you worked a certain amount of hours, it was something that was welcome. Cuz him and his buds would all have dinner, where they’d all brainstorm. They also “got high from udon”, which led to even more brainstorming afterward.

… Afterward a long line formed, with people wanting Uemura to sign their Nintendos…