Nintendo's Genyo Takeda is retiring in June

Source: My Nintendo News

Credited for leading the Wii's hardware development, also developed the N64's analog stick, and in addition, produced and directed Punch-Out!, Pilotwings 64, and Dr. Mario 64, Genyo Takeda will be retiring this June. Replacing him will be Ko Shiota.

Cool name.

He better spends his retired ass fishing with a wiimote accessory rod.

Good. I wish him a good retirement and love to see new blood. Keeps things fresh.

I wish that I can work for a company for so many years as Mr. Takeda. Too bad with changing economic times, most Japanese will not be working in the same job for decades.

Good riddance, hope the door does not hit him on the way out. "Credited for leading the Wii's hardware development, also developed the N64's analog stick"

Yay, get the man a cake and airmail me a slice

Microsoft should buy him. He would make great exclusive for them. Obviously a talented man.

So he....helped lead nintendo to 100 million consoles sold...and basically brought analog sticks to consoles...and...good riddance? This is why gamers are a cancer in their own hobby.

And Star Tropics.

Dude had a good run.

please stop stealing oxygen from people who really need it

Nintendo needs every one of the people who ran it for the last 30 years to just leave. It's way too out of touch with what people want.

Good Riddance. Besides Punch Out I was never really impressed with his work. He was no Gunpei Yokoi. Hopefully Miyamoto follows suite.

Nintendo needs fresh blood pronto. Get all these old hacks out of there.

@charizard1605: Cute, doesn't change the fact that he was the lead developer of Nintendo's worst home console ever and while the analog stick was great when it first came out the design was flawed. Now you have a ton of N64 controllers with loose or straight up broken sticks. Thanks a lot Takeda. Sony's design was clearly superior given you rarely see PS1 analog controllers with broken sticks. Might have the rubber missing but they usually still work.

Shit breaks after over 20 years of use?

Jesus, someone alert the media.

Your complaint is that analog sticks broke after 20 years of use? NO FUCKING SHIT

My DualShock 4 sticks are already loose and peeling off, and that shit is not even four years old, is Mark Cerny a hack?

Jesus Christ, you need a sense of perspective.

N64 controllers were breaking within the first couple of years after extended use. No need to make excuses for an obviously flawed design.

We have the PS1 analog controller to directly compare it with and you can readily find perfectly working controllers at a good price.

So are my DualShock 4s.

Mark Cerny is a hack, confirmed.

I can readily find N64 controllers in perfect condition at a good price, too.

Without getting into the whole 'it's easy to build off of shit someone else did and address flaws' nonsense, of course. This might be the most transparent you have ever been.

Yeah, but its a known serious issue specifically with the N64's analog stick. They go bad a lot faster than any other sticks because of said poor design. Dreamcast and Saturn 3D control sticks still work just fine.

I'm talking on a large scale, not some few exceptions. Of course any controller can go bad, but N64 controllers in particular are notorious to have sticks that go bad very quickly.

The main problem is they didn't lube up the plastic parts so the friction caused wear. Thankfully I found some decent second hand N64 controllers and lubricated all the internal plastic pieces, so should be good for awhile.

Because they were the first. They were literally making shit up as they went along. It's a lot easier to not make mistakes once you've seen someone else make them.

As a huge Nintendo fan, I just want to say **** Nintendo. Past, present, and future.

Shit posters aside, hope dude enjoys his retirement.

DualShock 4 analog stick issues are well known and widespread, too.

They didn't build off the design that Nintendo used. They used readily available joystick potentiometers for their analog sticks that are similar to the ones you see in R/C controllers which were used years before the N64 was even a thought. The N64 analog design is a totally one off design that nobody else really copied.

No they weren't. Analog sticks existed before the N64. Vectrex has a true self-centering analog stick.

And as we all know, it is Vectrex's analog stick that set the standard and is widely aped in the industry today.

The analog stick tech found in the Vectrex and R/C controllers is the basis for what was in the PS1's Analog stick. Sony didn't take Nintendo's design and improved on it, they found a design that was already superior on the market elsewhere. Even Nintendo realized the Analog stick design in the PS1 was superior and used the same tech in the GC controllers.

Also, just found out that the Joystick in the N64 wasn't actually analog, but digital. Though it still functioned like an analog stick.

He had a good run. I hope he enjoys his retirement.

*Looks at the other comments*

Reminds me. Still haven't beaten that yet.

Good work..time to relax, chill & play golf. :P

Thank you for your service old man.

“If [Nintendo] had followed existing roadmaps we would have aimed to make [the Wii] faster and flashier. We’d have tried to improve the speed at which it displays stunning graphics. But we could not help but ask, ‘How big an impact would that really have on our customers?’ In development, we came to realize the sheer inefficiency of this path when we compared the hardships and costs of development against the new experiences customers might have.”

God damn livin Legend.

This post is such obvious bait for people like me lmao.

You don't actually believe what you say.

@emgesp: Sorry mate, unlike you and other graphical gimmick chasers, i focus on gameplay. I play games, i dont let the games play me. Thats why i love and follow Nintendo, theyre innovators and go against the grain. Switch Gang till i die. Haters get a, bottle to the head, bottle to the head!

Anyone who participated in Punch-Out! deserves mad respect.

He did not sell hardware, software did. He created overpriced gimmicky hardware that was inferior to first generation Xbox hardware. Analog sticks were on consoles before the N64. Weren't the sticks on the N64 not even technically analog sticks?

That's an analog joystick. What the N64 did is an analog thumbstick. Two different things. Conflating it with the analog joystick misses the entire point of the analog thumbstick.

@emgesp: Didn't Gunpei Yokoi invent the Virtual Boy?

I don't know. As far as worst consoles Nintendo have produced, virtual boy is way worse than the N64. :P

Genyo Takeda produced some great titles - especially the Punch-Out! series.

Sony was directly aping the N64 analog thumbstick, not whatever irrelevant analog joystick you might be thinking of.

@jumpaction: Gunpei Yokoi gets a pass on the Virtual Boy because he helped create the best game in the world, Super Metroid. He also made that Gameboy thing that people seem to like but I'm not really a fan.

@charizard1605: they did not invent the thumbstick. Someone else did in 89. Look up the xe1-ap. They were still in virgin territory so its a little unfair to complain.

@mark1974: What was his involvement with Super Metroid?

@jumpaction: he is the creator of Metroid and he also had a hand in Super Metroid.

It still wasn't the first controller with an "Analog Thumbstick".

I present you Exhibit A: The XE-1 AP controller for the Sega Genesis released in 1989. Yes, that is a true self-centering Analog Thumbstick.

@mark1974: Well, co-creator. Yoshio Sakamoto also had a hand in the inception of Metroid. :P

But Yokoi's involvement on Super Metroid must be pretty small. He isn't listed as producer, director or designer of the game. Actually Sakamoto is. He probably plays a bigger role in the series than Yokoi does.

@jumpaction: Yeah, I'm just going by what is normally said of him concerning Metroid's creation and that Super Metroid was the last one he had a hand in. I have no idea of course who actually did what.

They say he created the D pad. That's pretty big.

That wasn't part of Nintendo's main dedicated home console line of products. It was some weird spin-off device.

Don't even know the point of it existing, but regardless he gets a pass for all the other great things he's done. Everyone is entitled to at least one major blunder.

The XE1-AP is a good example (one that I've brought up a number of times before).

The Vectrex, however, is a bad example, since that's a joystick, not a thumbstick.

@mark1974:I don't think it was that much, honestly. :/

Not to discredit him! I love his work but I think Metroid was more Sakamoto's baby.

@emgesp: Yokoi believed it would be a truly innovative device that competitors would find hard to replicate. Like you said, everyone is entitled to a few mistakes but then you are also discrediting an awful lot of Takeda's work over your feelings towards the N64 (which still led to some true classics like Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Super Mario 64 and Starfox 64).

No I love the N64, but Jesus they really cheaped out when it came to the N64's Analog stick design. It is so cheaply built and put together. They should have at least applied some lubrication, but nope Nintendo is cheap as usual.