Terrible news has spread to the world of retrogaming. Dr. Masayuki Uemura – creator of the iconic NES console, known in Poland as Pegasus, has passed away.
Masayuki Uemura was born on June 20, 1943 in Tokyo, an engineer, video game developer and professor. Originally associated with Sharp, then he joined Nintendo in 1971. It was him, Gunpei Yokoi and Genyo Takeda who worked on the cells used later in the “Laser Clay Shooting System”, ie shooting dummy guns at cells displayed on the TV screen. After assuming the position of CEO of Nintendo R & D2, Uemura worked as lead designer for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Super NES consoles. The former sold almost 62 million units, while the latter sold 49 million. In 2004, Uemura left Nintendo to take up a professorship at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. In 2011, he founded the RCGS company.
Nintendo Entertainment System (NES for short) – third generation computer game console (with 8-bit architecture) produced by the Japanese company Nintendo. It was first presented on July 15, 1983 on the Japanese market as Nintendo Family Computer, also known as Famicom or Pegasus . The rebuilt version of the NES was introduced internationally in the following years (in Europe in 1986). In 1988, Uemura developed the Super Famicom console and the western version, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). Many groundbreaking games have been released on the NES, such as the platformer Super Mario Bros, the adventure game The Legend of Zelda or the action game Metroid. As one of the best-selling consoles of those years, it significantly contributed to the revitalization of the American gaming market after the collapse of 1983.. In Poland, the golden years of this console’s glory fall in the second half of the 90s. Until today, the Pegasus brand is mentioned as one of the iconic elements of the last decade of the 20th century.
Masayuki Uemura died on December 6, 2021, but the information was only made public today, December 9, 2021 by Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. Everything points to the natural cause of death. Masayuki Uemura was 78 years old.