Watch the video here:
1969
In 1969, Nintendo was split into three distinct departments.
- Dept 1 for Western style Playing Cards
- Dept 2 for Japanese style Cards
- Dept 3 for toys and games research and development.
It’s this new Department 3 which is the most interesting for us, this was their first dedicated research and development office, founded by Hiroshi Imanishi.
Imanashi had joined Nintendo in 1963 and managed to convince the then president of the company, Hiroshi Yamauchi that the future of the company should be more focussed on games and toys rather than just cards.
Gunpei Yokoi, who had joined in 1965, became the first hire for this new devision.
The Nintendo Games Research Division continued until 1978 when it was split up into the R&D1, which eventually went on to make some Nintendo classic games and hardware such as game & watch, the Game Boy, and the Donkey Kong arcade game, among many others!
The first toy made there was the Love Tester, designed by Gunpei Yokoi. Some people believe that this was actually Nintendo’s first electronic toy, but that was actually the Companion walkie-talkie, which was released in 1965, back in their experimental phase. It was one of their first ventures into electronics with the Japanese company Sharp. They would go on to have a long and fruitful partnership with them.
It was a simple electronic device where two people would hold one side of it, then hold hands to complete the circuit and the love tested would measure the current passing through them.
1971
In 1971 they hired Masayuki Uemura, who had previously worked at Sharp as an electronics manufacturer. He would go on to create the TV Game systems, and the Famicom that followed.
He first met Gunpei Yokoi through his with work at Sharp as a marketer. He originally went to Nintendo just to see if they would buy some of their new solar cells and semiconductors, but getting far more than he bargained for, Gunpei decided to hire him instead, and they worked together to incorporate Sharp’s cell technology.
The first game Uemura and Yokoi worked on together was a gun called Kôsenjû SP, that could be used to fire light at objects with a variety of targets and the effects would change depending on where it aimed. These light gun games were very popular and began to not only be sold at toy shops for home use, but also in arcades. And soon, even retooled bowling alleys!
There were a few other versions of the SP released this year with different themes and moving parts.
A year before the official release of the Magnavox Odyssey, back when it was still just known as the “Brown Box”, Magnavox came to Nintendo to help them develop a light gun for the system.
Nintendo redesigned their Kôsenjû SP guns to work with a TV screen, and helped Magnovox create the gun that would be sold for the system. Take a look at these images from Reddit to see how similar it is to the Nintendo original!
1973
Instead of going down the primitive video game route straight away, Yamauchi instead decided to expand on the light gun idea, by going bigger! Instead of a toy to shoot at, his plan was to take abandoned bowling alleys and transform them into shooting ranges, with projected images on the wall that rows of people could shoot at simultaneously. The result was the Nintendo Laser Clay Shooting System. At first this venture proved lucrative, but soon after, Japan was hit by the Oil crisis, and they were forced to close the new light gun alleys and re-focus on other ways to turn a profit.
This turned out to be a blessing in disguise though, as they turned their hand back to traditional video games.
At first, they just created smaller standalone versions of their shooting games, which would ultimately be their entry into the arcade gaming scene. Some of these shooting gallery games were even published by SEGA overseas!
1975
In 1975, Two years before the release of the TV Game 6, Nintendo released what they consider to be their first true “Video Game”, EVR Race, which stands for Electronic Video Recording, designed by Genyo Takeda and was developed jointly with Mitsubishi. There’s no video online about how it played, but there’s a few descriptions of its gameplay online, so here’s how Nintendo’s first ever video game worked.
The machine had the option of either display here races, or car races, which was down to the decision of the arcade owner. Once it was set up, people would sit around the cabinet and use the buttons to bet on which horse, or car, they think was going to win. Then the system would play a randomly selected video clip, and if the player guessed correctly, they would win. Think of it like early FMV games which came a few years later. Impressive to see, but very limited in interactivity.
There were two versions of the cabinet, a multiplayer one, and a single standalone machine.
Genyo Takeda discussed it in an Iwata asks interview in and apparently it was very unreliable, and one of the reasons nintendo decided to use semiconductors for future games, instead of EVR discs.
The EVR technology was a kind of film reel, which before the invention of Betamax and VHS, was planned to be a video format, but it never took off, despite it’s high quality, full colour playback.
Today, these machines are lost to time unfortunately, with no working cabinets or EVR tapes known to be left, a few listings have appeared on Yahoo Auctions, At first I could only find this one from 2017, which didn’t sell, and both images showed the screen off, and none of the actual voting section present either…
https://web.archive.org/web/20170506071841/https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/x465226628
However, a bit more digging uncovered this auction from 2021, with a fully intact voting section, and the whole thing was in much better condition too! Unfortunately, still no signs of life though, and to this day, the actual video and mechanics of it remain a mystery…
Maybe one day, someone will find a working cabinet!
An even more obscure EVR Release came the year after in the form of EVR Baseball. Only a few blurry images exist of this game!
Also in 1975, Nintendo helped launch the Magnavox Odyssey into the Japanese market, and the first ever game console was released in Japan by Epoch called TV Tennis. A simple pong clone, and the first of many.
1976
After the successes of the Odyssey, and the influx of pong clones that followed thanks to the excitement surrounding Atari’s popular arcade game, Nintendo finally tried their hand at making a true home video game, a TV game.
Despite this being Nintendo’s first game console, it wasn’t actually Nintendo’s idea. They were happy experimenting with arcade machines and continuing their toy and card lines. It was actually Mitsubishi that was planning to create a game console in Japan, in partnership with Systech, but that ultimately fell through as Systech went bankrupt, leaving Nintendo as a good alternative. So they decided to team up and produce two TV game consoles.
This first one consisted of three different Pong variations, with a further mode for each one, hence the name, TV Game 6. It’s a multiplayer only console, and certainly not a very exciting first step for Nintendo. But, it exists, and it’s an important part of their history!
1977
The console game out on June 1, 1977 for only ¥9,800, which was much cheaper than any of the competition.
A few weeks later, an upgraded version, the TV Game 15 came out too, but that’s for a future video!
Because the TV Game 6 is a 2 Player only game, I have enlisted the help of my girlfriend, let’s see what she
The three game types are hockey (ホッケー), volley ball (バレーボール) and tennis (テニス). Each of these can be played in singles mode (シングルス) or doubles mode (ダブルズ).
The four switches at the top of the control panel are: racket size of left and right player (up is small, down is big), speed after bounce on the racket (up is high, down is low) and game mode selection (up is doubles, down is singles).
The three switches at the bottom of the control panel are: power switch (up is on, down is off), reset button and game type selection (volley ball, tennis, hockey).
References:
Footage and photos from:
nintendos-office-and-factories-in-1970.html
A Rare Look Inside Nintendo (SNES Era)
Game Escape
Shoshinkai 1995, Nintendo President Yamauchi’s opening remarks
遊び方にパテントは無いわけです。
Gunpei Yokoi at E3 1995
NINTENDO rare product “Love Tester” (1968) TV commercial and more
Nintendo Companion
Photos from:
nintendo-companion-ca-1965.html
Sharp Calculator Commercial #2 (1970s)
Masayuki Uemura speaking in 2020, Lead architect of the NES & SNES)
The Retro Byte
MASAYUKI UEMURA, el genio entre las sombras de NINTENDO
Marc Rollan
Magnavox Odyssey Commercials and Television Appearance from 1972-1973
The Total Noob
Magnavox Odyssey: The world’s first video game console! – Unboxing, Gameplay, and Review | RGLR
Retro Game Living Room
任天堂 EVRレース 1975年 一瞬だけ (nintendo EVRrace)
Epoch Electrotennis Japan
EricTucson
Electronic Circuits in Stone – A Video History of Japan’s electronic industry – (Part 2)
EVR Baseball photo:
https://twitter.com/johnandersen21/status/1261990719486603264?s=61&t=JNpzZvAeQ-ehjJEA19YO1Q
Discover more from RetroBreak
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I just discovered your channel and I find your content amazing. I definitely would like to help you with finding information on video game history (especially Nintendo)