THE POP EXPOSE – NES and Super NES Creator Masayuki Uemura Passes Away!
Story By Mitchell Smith
Well hello everyone. This week we lost Masayuki Uemura, the man responsible for creating the NES and Super NES console. Nintendo was founded in 1889 and originally made card games. Nearly 90 years later the world was about to change. Uemura was born June 20th 1943 in Tokyo Japan. Uemura worked for Sharpe before landing a job at Nintendo in 1971. At the time not many people knew much about Nintendo. When Uemura was hired little did he know on the other side of the globe an electronic arcade video game was created and was about to start a revolution. Arcades had been around for decades mostly at carnivals and fairs with games like skee-ball and Whac-A-Mole.
These are still fun games today played at fairs, but the first arcade video game was about to change life as we knew it. Atari one of the lead companies in video games would mass produce arcade games and video arcades became huge all over the world. In 1972 Atari also created a home console. I remember my cousin who lived next door had one. It was the greatest thing since sliced bread. A new revolution started home game consoles. Thankfully Uemura took the job in 1971 because he became the lead architect on the NES and later on the Super NES. The first time I played the NES we rented it from our local grocery store. I remember getting together and fighting with my brothers to take turns playing.
We would stay up all night because the following day we either had to return it or pay another days rent for it. Well that Christmas we got our own NES. I still have my Super NES and I still play the games I played as a kid. Uemura did more then create a video game console. He put video games in homes. He brought friends and family together to play games with and against. Back in my day we couldn’t look up how to beat levels on games such as Zelda. So we had to rely on other people. So when your brother or friend figured out the real tricky part in games he showed you how to do it. We also played countless sports games with and against each other.
And now a days the world is connected on line and people in Tokyo can play Minecraft with some in the middle of nowhere USA. It is a marvel. One brilliant mind and one small machine brought the entire world together. RIP Masayuki Uemura.
