It is an undisputed fact that all great things start small and this is an account of how one of the most popular video game platforms today almost never got to be developed. A former employee of Nintendo dished out on the making of Nintendo DS and it has left people in awe and realized how truly blessed Nintendo fans are.
A former employee of Nintendo named Satoru Okada used to be the General Manager of Nintendo Research and Engineering until he finally retired from work in 2012. He revealed how decades ago, the late Hiroshi Yamauchi and the late Satoru Iwata pushed with the plans of developing Nintendo DS. At that time, Okada and his team were already working on Project Iris, which was the codename for the development of the next Game Boy Advance.
When the proposal was made, Hiroshi Yamauchi somehow thought Project Iris should have two screens, which the Nintendo DS eventually ending up having. With this idea, he proposed this to Satoru Iwata, who was then president of Nintendo and then relayed it to Okada. Okada admitted that he and Iwata were actually terribly against the idea but the latter insisted that the double screen will be infused with the development.
Okada pointed out that it was difficult at that stage of the development to make a major change especially with the screen since it would highly affect the gameplay, resolution, and more of the features. But even after Okada argued over it with Yamauchi, Iwata still went ahead with the latter’s idea. With the adjustments, Nintendo had to scrape off Project Iris off the plate and was forced to create a new one called Nitro for the development of Nintendo DS.
And the rest is clearly history as the double-screened Nintendo DS was finally launched in 2004 and was available for purchase for a decade. Nintendo DS has been one of the most profitable products that Nintendo has released. In 2011, they finally released Nintendo 3DS, which is the successor and upgraded version of Nintendo DS.
