Nintendo Software Technology is an Americanvideo game developer. NST was created by Nintendo as a first-party developer to create games for the North American market, though their games have also been released in other territories such as Europe and Japan. Although the development team is based in North America, there is a traditional Nintendo and Japanese-centric design applied to the development of the software. Co-founders Scott Tsumura and Claude Comair retired in 2002 and 2006, respectively. NST is currently headed by Shigeki Yamashiro, and is located inside of Nintendo of America's headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Nintendo made the decision of transplanting several members of their development team in Japan over to America. NST also recruited several veterans from companies such as Rockstar Games, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft to further complete their development talent.
History
The establishment took place in 1998 through a collaboration with the private universityDigiPen Institute of Technology, also located in Redmond. The offices opened with several doctorate level instructors and some recent graduates of the university working with several Nintendo of America designers and producers. Their first game, , was released for the Game Boy Colorin 1999 and was a sequel of Capcom's Bionic Commando. Over the years, NST has developed many games for Nintendo consoles such as the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series,, and Metroid Prime Hunters. NST started developing Project H.A.M.M.E.R. For the Nintendo Wii but several problems landed the project in 'development hell'. A large amount of funding was spent on cut-scenes early in development and so when the project started to fall behind managers didn't want to end it because of the capital already spent. The American developers suggested that the problem was the gameplay however the Japanese managers believed the problems were the environments. This dispute, among others, made the project drag on for a number of years before it was totally abandoned and a large number of staff were made redundant. DigiPen's Main Campus was based in the same building as theirs until 2010.
