Remembering Masayuki Uemura

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Remembering Masayuki Uemura

Masayuki Uemura (20 June 1943 – 6 December 2021) was a towering figure in the world of videogames and a good friend of the National Videogame Museum.

With a career spanning more than 30 years, he was a hardware designer, engineer and videogame producer. However, Uemura is most famous for leading Nintendo’s Research & Development 2 team where he was responsible for creating the Nintendo Famicom and Nintendo Super Famicom consoles. These were known as the NES and SNES outside Japan.

Transforming Videogames

Very few people can claim to have transformed global entertainment but Masayuki Uemura is definitely one. The Famicom and its control pad set out the blueprint for almost all games systems to come.

At the NVM we are proud to celebrate the life of Uemara-sensei, shining a light on his achievements within the videogames industry and uncovering the hidden history of the Famicom and it’s successors. His talent knew no bounds as he also produced several videogames, helped develop the technology used for Duck Hunt and designed the Japan only Famicom Disk System.⁠

Thank you Uemura-sensei

Sadly, Uemura-sensei passed away at the end of 2021 and so it is vitally important to us to pay tribute to one of the most influential and humble figures in the history of videogames. It was a real privilege to have had the opportunity to work with, and to learn from, Uemura-sensei over the years.

We were constantly in awe of his imagination and will be forever grateful for his support for our work at the museum. There are very few people who can be said to have revolutionised the global entertainment and computing industries, Masayuki Uemura was one of them.

Remembering Masayuki Uemura is extremely important to us and we’re proud to display an exhibition in his honour.

The Japan Collection
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Masayuki Uemura was a towering figure in the world of videogames and a good friend of the NVM.

Uemura’s Playlist
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Celebrating the legendary, Masayuki Uemura, this bundle of games dedicated to him were hand picked by Uemura himself during a visit to the NVM