Masayuki Uemura, the lead architect behind the NES and SNES, has passed away on Monday, December 6, 2021 according to a statement from Ritsumeikan University.

Uemura was born in Tokyo in 1943. He studied electronic engineering at the Chiba Institute of Technology and joined Nintendo in 1971. Once at Nintendo he was tasked with developing a hom console that could play Nintendo games which at that point were only available in arcades.

His work ultimately materialized in the Famicom in 1983, known in the US as the NES. He also worked on the successor Super Famicom (SNES) which was released in Japan in 1990.

[Source: Ritsumeikan University]