Nintendo Integrated Research & Development is a Nintendo first party development studio responsible for designing Nintendo hardware and doing research for the consoles. During the early game development years of Nintendo, IR&D also crated video games, though they no longer do.
Some of their heavy hitters include the likes of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, Super Punch-Out!!, StarTropics, NES Play Action Football, and Teleroboxer. When they were first created, they were known as Nintendo Research & Development 3 (or Nintendo R&D3) (headed by Genyo Takeda). According to Takeda, this R&D group was nicknamed Rumania due to their isolation from the others. Their motto was "there are no limitations, no boundaries; since we are on our own, there is nothing we cannot do; when you start with nothing you can do everything."
Former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi had decided to separate his research and development groups. This resulted in the creation of Nintendo R&D1, Nintendo R&D2, and Nintendo R&D3. Genyo Takeda was put in charge of managing R&D3, while Yamauchi would still be the head of all three groups. R&D3 is known for creating the Punch-Out!! and StarTropics series, as well as creating a bunch of games for the Virtual Boy, but they are perhaps most important for creating technology that allowed the other R&D's games to be created.
The first chips that were placed in Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges were very limited. Takeda's group had the intention of creating enhanced chips for newer types of cartridges. One of the earlier cartridges, called UNROM, allowed for more memory. Consequently the developers thrived in creating technology that would make games created by the other groups possible. Games such as The Legend of Zelda, Metroid and Kid Icarus were all possible only because of chips that R&D3 created (in this case the MMC chip).
List of games
- Ice Hockey - NES, Virtual Console
- Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! - NES, Virtual Console
- NES Play Action Football - NES, Virtual Console
- Pro Wrestling - NES
- StarTropics - NES, Virtual Console
- Zoda's Revenge: StarTropics II - NES, Virtual Console
- Pilotwings - SNES, Virtual Console
- Super Punch-Out!! - SNES, Virtual Console
- Mario Clash - Virtual Boy
- Mario's Tennis - Virtual Boy
- Nester's Funky Bowling - Virtual Boy
- Teleroboxer - Virtual Boy
- V-Tetris - Virtual Boy
- Wario Land VB - Virtual Boy
- Arm Wrestling - Arcade