Inside Nintendo's offices circa 1989

UncleSporky

I know this is the sort of thing you'd find on a blog like kotaku, but I thought it was pretty cool and wanted to share it.

A guy has come across a children's picture book with a focus on Super Mario Bros. 3 back in 1989. He's posted the entirety of the book along with translations and close ups of objects found in the pictures. It is pretty neat!



Above is Miyamoto's desk. You can see a development Famicom next to the TV with a circuit board sticking out, and a number of other fun things (a Mother poster?!). Also there is a binder on the shelf labeled "SM4" which would be interesting to see at this early stage, before Mario 3 was even out.



Miyamoto smoking. The arrangement of the dates on the calendar let us know this is July 1989.



Takeshi Tezuka's office (the guy in the credits as Ten Ten). From the orientation of office clutter we can see that his desk is back to back with Miyamoto's. Also, Tezuka's got a Sega Mega Drive collection over in the corner (behind Miyamoto's back)!



Tezuka working on the graphics for Mario 3.



Koji Kondo, writing music.

There are a lot more pics and better explanations at the actual site:

http://www.disgruntleddesigner.com/chrisc/secret/weekly/Stars_of_the_Family_Computer.html

Cool stuff.

Jintor

This stuff is always fascinating to me

Klorgnum

Wikipedia says SMB3 was released in 1988 in Japan. Are you sure that's what they're working on?

Antihippy

The book is probably released after the development.

UncleSporky

Hmm, you're right, and his site does say the book "focuses" on Mario 3, so all the pics may just be set ups to illustrate the process. They do show pics of Mario 3 shipping, too.

agoaj

I see a green case in the background, it looks like Miyamoto was playing from 360 games back in 1988.

slash000

Klorgnum wrote: »

Wikipedia says SMB3 was released in 1988 in Japan. Are you sure that's what they're working on?

The book is just showing Nintendo's offices and the guys workplace and stuff. The book isn't showing them working on Mario 3, but Tezuka just decided to show off the SMB3 CHR files.

Cantido

Amazing!

HenryVape

O dont think ive ever seen a picture of miyamoto with a tie before, i love stuff like this and wish we could get a series with pictures of nintendos offices today. also it reminded me that i still think cathode-ray tube sounds like a doomsday weapon

LupintheThird

This guy's page is a virtual gold mine of old-school Japanese Nintendo stuff. He first posted the well-circulated pics about the Super Famicom's first unveiling, including all-red controller buttons (Marked A, B, C, and D!), and the Famicom Adapter, Nintendo's "solution" for backward compatibility for the Super Famicom (really just a redesigned Famicom that would tap into an A/V passthrough on the Super).

eobet

Thank you for posting this!

Small companies are usually about people who get together to create something special... and then when they grow larger, they inevitably loose something in the process.

I think Nintendo is probably the company that has best managed to hold on to its magic, with Apple in second place (although we're starting to see cracks in Apple's facade, imo).

SirUltimos

Wow, this is fascinating stuff. I love this kinda thing.

Kris_xK

Really interesting. I'd suggest clicking through to the actual site, got some more stuff in there.

Vegan

That's the coolest Social Studies book ever.

PaperLuigi44

This is pretty damn cool.

Now I want to see a timeline of the offices through the years.

IceBurner

Very neat, thanks for sharing. The site does indeed have a fair bit of fascinating info, but to get the most out of it you will probably need to be able to read Japanese.

Cameron_Talley

This is the kind of stuff that I love. Early Nintendo history is still my favorite era of Video games. I really do need to make it to Japan one of these days...