Masayuki Uemura

Masayuki Uemura (上村 雅之, Uemura Masayuki, born June 20, 1943) is a Japanese game hardware designer. Due to the bombing of Japan during World War II, his family was forced to move to Kyoto. Having little money, he was forced to make his own toys. His toys became more and more complex and he wanted to learn more, so he went to industrial college. Once he graduated, Sharp Corporation hired him immediately.

One day, Sharp sent him on a sales call to Nintendo to see if they wanted solar cells, which caught the eyes of Gunpei Yokoi because these cells can be used in their entertainment products. Yokoi kept in touch with Uemura, and eventually hired him away from Sharp.

These solar cells were used in the Nintendo beam gun games. They put these games on the market to the consumer, which turned out to be a success for Nintendo.

When Hiroshi Yamauchi split Nintendo's Research and Development into three groups (which later became four), Uemura became the head of Nintendo's Research and Development 2 team. This team focused exclusively on hardware. It is better known for designing the NES and SNES consoles, but it also was responsible for a varierty of peripherals such as the NES Zapper, the Famicom Disk System, and the Satellaview (for which Uemura served as the division chief). The R&D2 also made a few games, but were not as prominent as the other development teams. Uemura retired from Nintendo in 2004.