Masayuki Uemura, a former Nintendo engineer and chief designer of NES and SNES game consoles, has died at the age of 78. This was confirmed by the Japanese university where the man was studying as a visiting professor.

Uemura joined Nintendo in 1972, where he helped develop the Laser Clay Shooting System, a game experience that simulated clay shooting and formed the basis for the subsequent Duck Hunt game on the NES console.

in a Interview with Kotaku from 2020 Uemura said that one day in 1981 he got a call from Hiroshi Yamauchi, then the president of Nintendo. He was asked to build a video game system that could play games with cartridges. Uemura thought this was Yamauchi’s whim, but according to the engineer, he was still in his office the day after the project started.

As a first step, Yamauchi reportedly purchased all of the competing gaming hardware. He dissected these before he began developing the Famicom, the Nintendo game console that was introduced to the Japanese market in 1983. Famicom was a success in its home country of Japan, although the system initially suffered from a lot of flaws. In 1984, Nintendo also sold the game console in the American market, but in the form of a game console that can only be found in American arcades. In 1985, the Nintendo Entertainment System was launched in the North American market which was primarily a Famicom console with a modified design.

In 1988, Nintendo debuted designs for the Super Famicom video game console. Uemura also contributed to the development of the Super Famicon, known in the West as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. He will later remain active in the company developing new products and games.

In 2004, Uemura left Nintendo and became a guest lecturer at Japan’s Ritsumeikan University. There he taught video games and console development. Japanese University Reports That Masayuki Uemura died on December 6, at the age of 78.