NES designer on the system’s name, setting itself apart from Atari, and success
Mashable recently had a chance to speak with Masayuki Uemura, the lead designer of the Nintendo Entertainment System.
At one point during the discussion, Uemura commented on how the name was settled on:
“We decided to put Entertainment in the middle. We thought we could maybe piggyback a little bit [on] the naming idea Atari had had, but put something with a little more dynamism and attraction in the middle. So that’s how it became the NES.”
Masayuki went on to discuss Atari – which had created a negative images of games – and how Nintendo wanted to go in a different direction.
“For our strategy, one of the things we thought was most important was to overcome this image that home gaming wasn’t popular, which had unfortunately happened due to Atari’s system. But we also realized [that] the moment people saw what we were bringing out and thought ‘oh, this is just another Atari,’ we would lose them.”
“Atari was famous for their joystick. We were a little worried if it would be a success or not, but we knew it was different from Atari — and we knew when people saw it they could see that difference immediately.”
Finally, Uemura shared some words about the NES’ success and how it’s still talked about today:
“I was so surprised to find that in Japan and, America as well, that over these 30 years, the interest in the history hasn’t disappeared. This was something they cherish about being kids at that time, was going to school and that was everyone was talking about the Famicom. When they get together now, in their alumni groups or whatever, these are people who are 40 — the topics that are sure to come up are the Famicom and ‘those times.’ The fact the Famicom succeeded after the game market fell apart with the shock from Atari could be said by some to be a miracle. But this was something that we believed in and we created because we thought it would be a success. We went with that belief — and it stands as a testament that 30 years later, it’s still being talked about. And I’m proud of that.”
