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Masayuki Uemura has died
- markus_zhang 5y agoSad to hear about this :( He brought so much joy into the hearts of small kids and big kids. Maybe I'm biased, but I feel that Japanese video game developers don't enjoy the long life I think Japanese should enjoy. There are other examples. 78 is not bad but still far from good.
- jacquesm 5y agoI hope to live that long. The average life expectancy for a Japanese male is 84, but there is this pandemic going on and it has definitely hit the older generation hard.
- Aeolun 5y agoTrue, but it is fairly unlikely he passed away from COVID unless he got extremely unlucky. There’s very few cases in Japan right now.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoMy friend at Tokyo university says they keep public windows open, cases are low, and it didn’t hit Japan hard at all, they were used to wearing masks long before, and most people isolate naturally anyway.
- andruc 5y agoWith the passing of Uemura, and Near (aka Byuu) earlier this year, the SNES has truly become an artifact of history.
- coldacid 5y agoByuu died too? I didn't hear about this!
- echelon 5y agoByuu was bullied into committing suicide by a bunch of horrible trolls that wouldn't leave them alone. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27652814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27652814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27657610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27657610
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Minor49er 5y agoIt's not as simple and one-sided as this. Here is the response from the owner of Kiwi Farms regarding the matter: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/my-response-regarding-byuu-near.93719/ https://kiwifarms.net/threads/my-response-regarding-byuu-nea...
- pygy_ 5y agoByuu/Near committed suicide following a coordinated harrasment campaign targeted against them, their family and friends, for being openly queer.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoYes it was sad, I heard he committed suicide, he sounded like a very depressed person who had a kiwi farms thread he had previously joked around in, but then threatened to kill himself if they didn’t give into his demands (they didn’t, who expects them to?) as only a pretext. Reminds me of Mishima. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima >His biographer, translator John Nathan, suggests that the coup attempt was only a pretext for the ritual suicide of which Mishima had long dreamed.
- kbelder 5y agoIt's disputed. No real evidence either way, just one post.
- sparky_z 5y ago
- Minor49er 5y agoFrom what I remember, he was in Japan when he claimed to have committed suicide. Japan publishes data on US citizens who have lost their lives in that country, and that year, they reported that nobody died. The only "proof" that there was that Byuu took his own life is a picture of this strange-looking urn https://ibb.co/jw4xC0q https://ibb.co/jw4xC0q No records, no funeral, nothing
- umvi 5y agoAre you claiming he faked his own death to escape his harassers? It is true it's hard to find concrete evidence of his death - the sole source of information is a twitter thread from "Hector"[0]. [0] https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1409176583433179137 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1409176583433179137
- GhettoComputers 5y agoThere is no evidence aside from a Twitter image, and heresay with no records.
- sparky_z 5y agoWhat records would you expect there to be that aren't there?
- Minor49er 5y agoDeath records, often called obituaries.
- modulusshift 5y agoYou seem to have no idea how obituaries work, you usually have to pay a newspaper to carry them, they aren't automatic, and if the news is published widely enough in the relevant communities why would you bother to pay for it? As for government records, vital records are often limited to people with an interest, such as family members, they aren't usually offered to the public. And why would such a person publish that record online? You might as well be claiming David Bowie didn't really die, I've never seen his death certificate.
- djmips 5y agoIt's sad Byuu is gone but they don't represent the SNES becoming an artifact of history nor does a big thread about them belong in a memorial thread about Masayuki Uemura. There are many more SNES emu programmers who will take their place. That being said. RIP David Kirk Ginder.
- Rooster61 5y agoWhat an absolute giant. The design of the NES made possible the games that revived the entire industry we know and love. There's no telling what gaming would look like for the past 35 years without his work. Godspeed sir.
- 1cvmask 5y agoQuite unusual for that era in corporate Japan he switched from Sharp to Nintendo. Sarariman of that era were lifers.
- city41 5y agoMaybe his connections across companies is what led to the Sharp Nintendo TV: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Nintendo_Television https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Nintendo_Television
- ipodopt 5y agoAbsolute legend, it's sad that he is gone. SNES is still my favorite platform (I love iso-morphic view points). Just a few months ago I setup a retopie and did a play through of one of my favorite games, Trials of Mana, with a rom patch (http://ngplus.net/index.php?/files/file/28-seiken-densetsu-3-sin-of-mana/ http://ngplus.net/index.php?/files/file/28-seiken-densetsu-3...). I feel the rom hacking community is still going strong and some of you guys might find it interesting. An intro to rom hacking: https://datacrystal.romhacking.net/wiki/Introduction_to_Hacking https://datacrystal.romhacking.net/wiki/Introduction_to_Hack... If you want to bootstrap a s/nes collection to play/hack on in memoriam (this may or may not work): 1. Update the no-intro rom set. This guy usually post an yearly update: https://archive.org/details/no-intro_romsets 2. Update the no-intro love pack dats (PC-XML): https://datomatic.no-intro.org/index.php?page=download&s=64&op=daily 3. [Update and Apply patches](https://www.marcrobledo.com/RomPatcher.js/) 4. Pull https://github.com/andrebrait/1g1r-romset-generator 5. Run build.sh to build 1g1r sets #!/bin/bash cd 1g1r-romset-generator git pull cd ../ # Select what systems you want for you base 1g1r romsets zips=( "Nintendo - Nintendo Entertainment System (20210122-114559) [headered]" "Nintendo - Nintendo Entertainment System (20210122-114559) [headered_iNES2.0_NRS(2020-09-27)]" "Nintendo - Nintendo Entertainment System (20210122-114559) [unheadered]" "Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Combined) (20201230-192658)" ) dats=( "Nintendo - Nintendo Entertainment System (Parent-Clone) (20210822-055431).dat" "Nintendo - Nintendo Entertainment System (Parent-Clone) (20210822-055431).dat" "Nintendo - Nintendo Entertainment System (Parent-Clone) (20210822-055431).dat" "Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Combined) (Parent-Clone) (Parent-Clone) (20210119-061911).dat" ) NOINTRODIR="no-intro_romsets/no-intro romsets/" OUTPUTDIR="roms-output/" mkdir -p $OUTPUTDIR for i in "${!zips[@]}"; do mkdir -p "$NOINTRODIR${zips[i]}" unzip -qq -n -d "$NOINTRODIR${zips[i]}" "$NOINTRODIR${zips[i]}.zip" python3 1g1r-romset-generator/generate.py \ --no-all \ --regions=USA,JP,EUR --languages=EN --all-regions \ --input-dir="$NOINTRODIR${zips[i]}" --output-dir="$OUTPUTDIR${zips[i]}" \ --threads=16 \ --dat="./No-Intro Love Pack (PC XML) (2021-08-22)/${dats[i]}" done
- GhettoComputers 5y agoI loved the chrono trigger rom hack, and Pokémon crystal rom hack (Pokémon prism).
- PrimeDirective 5y agoNintendo Famicon was the first console I ever played, and to this day, controller-based sidescrollers are my favorite type of games. Chances are, it's because all those hours I put into Famicon (Dendy, actually) as a kid. Thank you for all the memories!
- sanqui 5y agoIt is incredible that Uemura has been giving lectures at foreign universities even in his late age, and a member from our local video game archivist organization was extraordinarily lucky to get a NES signed from him when he was visiting Bratislava. https://sanqui.net/etc/masayuki_uemura_signed_nes.jpg https://sanqui.net/etc/masayuki_uemura_signed_nes.jpg
- GhettoComputers 5y agoIs 78 considered old age? Danny Kahneman is 87, grew up in Nazi occupied France and still does.
- renewiltord 5y agoYes, 78 is considered old age. In fact, the US life expectancy at birth is 78.
- Kye 5y agoJapan's life expectancy is a bit higher.
- melling 5y agoYes, it’s 81.5 years for a man and almost 87 for a woman. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_ex...
- whimsicalism 5y agoyes, 81. i'd say 2-3 years before the average age of someone's death constitutes "old age", surprised to see this has spawned such a debate.
- laumars 5y agoLol I had the same thought. There’s times when HN feels a little like Monty Python https://youtu.be/xpAvcGcEc0k https://youtu.be/xpAvcGcEc0k
- ipodopt 5y ago"When I developed the Famicom, I put all the basic functions that were necessary to make it as a gaming device. For the Switch, it's inherited all that over the years. All the successes and failures of the Famicom are inherited by the next generation of consoles and onward." What did he consider to be the failures? EDIT: Added the first sentence of the quote. The way I read the quote is he felt there where fundamental designs decisions that have been passed down all the way to the Switch. Some of which he considers to be failures. I imagine he is talking about the hardware/software stack. OS seems pretty custom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch_system_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch_system_softwar...
- Aeolun 5y agoBlowing on the cardridge? It didn’t work for the Famicon, and it has even less effect with the Switch.
- foo_barrio 5y agoPerhaps the repeated insertions/removals did clear off any light oxidation or slightly reposition the contacts?
- conductr 5y agoI'll never believe it. Blowing was required and technique mattered.
- aidenn0 5y agoInsertions and removals did work well on the Famicom, but not so much on the NES; the famicom had a typical edge-connector while the NES had a zero-insertion-force (ZIF) connector. The pins would be repositioned with each insertion and you had to hope that all 72 pins made a good-enough contact. If the 10NES made poor contact you got a 1Hz reboot loop. If other pins made poor contact the game would kind-of sort-of work until it crashed.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
- darepublic 5y agolegendary craftsman. rip
- coldacid 5y agoF
- svdree 5y agoIt's a sad moment for gamers. He started working at Sharp, where he sold solar cell and light sensor technology, but he's best remembered for a long and highly influential run at Nintendo that effectively revived the video game industry following the 1983 crash.
- 999900000999 5y agoWhat a great legacy. We wouldn't have video gaming in any real capacity without the NES. I've largely built my career from gaming , thank you for the gifts.
- 999900000999 5y agoI think it's just a Japanese person thing, Yuri Kochiyama was still organizing and writing well into her 80s. Absolutely fascinating individual, she should be an essential part of American history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Kochiyama https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Kochiyama
- oh_sigh 5y agoAmerica, for the most part, isn't too keen on racial separatists who support cop killers. I guess she could be an essential part of American history like David Duke is.
- 999900000999 5y agoThe government sorta did lock her and her family in a camp for 3 years. All for the crime of being Japanese. To ignore her is to ignore one of our most shameful moments. I want our country to be better. We shouldn't be like the Russians who pretend things like the Holodomor didn't happen.
- oh_sigh 5y agoWould you support Jews who went around killing German cops randomly in 1990, because they were locked in a camp in the 1940s?
- themaninthedark 5y agoI have never heard anyone pretend that Japanese internement didn't happen. But just because something bad happened to you and your family, that does not give you the right to attack and hurt others. I see some examples where she was doing a lot of good and held great views: Kochiyama also taught English to immigrant students and volunteered at soup kitchens and homeless shelters in New York City.[13] In Debbie Allen's television series Cool Women (2001), Kochiyama stated, "The legacy I would like to leave is that people try to build bridges and not walls." But she also worked and associated with violent people and had no problem excusing them: Kochiyama and other activists demanded the release of four Puerto Rican nationalists convicted of attempted murder—Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero, and Irving Flores Rodríguez—who in 1954 had opened fire in the House of Representatives, injuring five congressmen. Kochiyama also supported Yū Kikumura, an alleged member of the Japanese Red Army, who was arrested in Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam in 1986 when he was found carrying a bomb in his luggage and subsequently convicted of planning to bomb a US Navy recruitment office in the Veteran's Administration building. I don't have time to dig into her entire history and see if all those accused of violent acts were justified or not but if you praise Osama bin Laden with one breath and then claim that "War and weaponry must be abolished" with the next, then you are not working for the abolition of violence, just want it to be controlled by people you like.
- triska 5y agoThank you so much Uemura-san for these great consoles! I often think about how great it was to play these games, the amount of effort and care that went into them, and the sense of fairness and pure joy that you bought a game and could truly experience it! There was a magic and sincerity in these consoles that is buried under layers of ads, in-game purchases, tracking, updates etc. in more recent devices and games. The NES and SNES still feel like the greatest consoles that ever existed. Thank you again!
- benkkey 5y agoThis man's a hero, he will forever be remembered.
- wheelerof4te 5y agoA loss for an entire generation of people. Visionaries are rare, but it's clear that every one of them is way ahead of his/her time. Rest in peace.
- jonny_eh 5y agoA fascinating talk he gave just two years ago in NYC: https://youtu.be/A53gdHXwxHg https://youtu.be/A53gdHXwxHg And a great written profile of his work: https://www.usgamer.net/articles/nes-creator-masayuki-uemura-on-the-birth-of-nintendos-first-console https://www.usgamer.net/articles/nes-creator-masayuki-uemura...
- makz 5y agoMy childhood and many of my fondest memories. Thanks Uemura-san.
- xiaodai 5y agoRIP. You bought me much joy.
- hypertexthero 5y agoI played my first Nintendo games in black and white on an NES that my dad brought back to Brazil after a trip to the US, and I loved them! The reason the games were black and white had something to do with the differences between broadcast color encoding systems of PAL, used in Brazil, and NTSC, used in the US. Eventually the hardware in my NES was modified and I could play the games in color, but it was, I suspect, an experience that shaped my own visual preferences. Thank you, Mr. Uemura and team!