abstract
| - Nintendo R&D1 is Nintendo's oldest development studio. Originally known simply as R&D, the names was changed when Nintendo R&D2 and Nintendo R&D3 were formed. R&D1 was originally headed by Gunpei Yokoi. In the early days, it was in charge of arcade games and the LCD Game & Watch series. The team included Shigeru Miyamoto until he earned his own team by creating Donkey Kong. R&D1 was originally Nintendo's biggest development group, so most Nintendo games for the NES were developed by them. Some of the more popular games by R&D1 include Metroid, Kid Icarus, Excitebike, Duck Hunt, and Mach Rider. While R&D1 was responsible for many of Nintendo's heavy hitters, development on the Mario series and The Legend of Zelda series was not handled by them during the NES era. Within R&D1, a group named Team Shikamaru emerged. Made up of Yoshio Sakamoto, Hitoshi Yamagami, and Toru Osawa, they were in charge of scripts and scenrios for R&D1. The group had written scripts for Metroid 2, Super Metroid, Detective Club, Detective Club 2, Card Hero, and For the Frog the Bell Tolls. When the Super Nintendo was released, R&D1 was asked to develop titles for the Game Boy. Because of this, they were sometimes referred to as R&D Game Boy or EAD Game Boy. Along with continuing with their own franchises, R&D1 also got to work with the Mario series by creating the Super Mario Land games. Eventually, they got to do their own take on it: Wario Land. After the disastrous Virtual Boy, Gunpei Yokoi left Nintendo to form Koto Laboratory. Takehiro Izushi was appointed the new head of R&D1. When the Game Boy Advance was released, R&D1 was once again the main group creating games for it. They created new Metroid and Wario Land games as well as the all-new WarioWare series. In 2005, in order to consolidate all the game developers, president Satoru Iwata merged R&D1 with Nintendo Software Planning and Development.
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