Metroid - 1986 (FCD, NES)

METROID メトロイド ©1986 Nintendo Version: Famicom Disk System (FCD) Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Publisher: NINTENDO CO., LTD. Production: NINTENDO - RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 1 DIVISION (R&D1) Development: NINTENDO CO., LTD. Additional Work: IWASAKI ENGINEERING CO., LTD. INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS CO., LTD.

KEY STAFF: NINTENDO CO., LTD. Director: Satoru Okada, Masao Yamamoto Planning: Makoto Kano, Hiroji Kiyotake, Hirofumi Matsuoka, Yoshio Sakamoto, Hirokazu Tanaka Visual: Makoto Kano, Hiroji Kiyotake, Hirofumi Matsuoka Program: Kenji Nishizawa Sound: Hirokazu Tanaka Support: Toru Osawa, M. Goyake, Takahiro Harada Production: Gunpei Yokoi Executive: Hiroshi Yamauchi IWASAKI ENGINEERING CO., LTD. Program: Hiroyuki Yukami, Yase Sobajima, Toshio Sengoku, Mitsunari Tani, Kenji Imai INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS CO., LTD. Tohru Narihiro

NOTES: Following the success of Nintendo's Super Mario Bros., the Nintendo R&D1 team that previously developed arcade like titles, began working on their own larger scale "action games". Planning and design were originally lead by Hirofumi Matsuoka and Hiroji Kiyotake, who managed to create a game taking place in outer space with a fast moving and jumping character. The production was described as a "very free working environment" by Hirokazu Tanaka, who was in charge of the music and sound, but also contributed ideas to the overall development. Partially through development, one of the developers asked the others, "Hey, wouldn't that be kind of cool if it turned out that this person inside the suit was a woman?" This idea was incorporated into the game, and revealed during the ending as a surprise to players. While much of the ground work was created by the original team, development struggled, and the team began to pull resources from other titles, most notably Yoshio Sakamoto was asked to join the team. While Sakamoto credits himself as co-creator alongside the original lead planners, he was pivotal in redesigning the map and shifting the mechanics from straight forward action to item based exploration. Sakamoto also injected much of his influences into the lore and world design of the game. Ridley Scott's 1979 horror film Alien was described by Sakamoto as a "huge influence" after the game's world had been created. The development staff was also inspired by the work of the film's creature designer H. R. Giger, and found his creations to be fitting for the theme. While concept, visual design, and audio were handled by Nintendo R&D1 - the programming duties were subcontracted to Iwasaki Electronics, who was one of the many technology contractors that Nintendo partnered for hardware and consignment game programming during that era. While the original version was released on the Famicom Disk System, the NES version was slightly different, Programming was handled by Iwasaki Engineering Co., Ltd. for the Famicom Disk System, with Tohru Narihiro from the newly formed Intelligent Systems converting it to the NES cartridge format with help from Nintendo's Kenji Nishizawa password system. Full Staff List: Metroid Credits

INFOBOX
Version: Famicom Disk System (FDS), Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
Source: KRIRM. Nintendo JP. Sakamoto Interview: Wired.com.
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