The Man Behind the Gameboy Consoles Speaks Up About the DS and Gameboy's Successor

To those who grew up in the late 90's to early 2000's, they'd be familiar with the Gameboy and the Nintendo DS consoles. Years after their respective releases, the man behind the two consoles shares his thoughts and experience in making them.

Satoru Okada has worked for Nintendo as the General Manager of Nintendo Research and Engineering. With a recent interview in Retro Gamer Magazine, he shared his ideas and thoughts back when he is still working for the company. Okada revealed that his team is initially against the concept of the DS.

IRIS is the codename of the newest handheld of Nintendo back then. It is said that it will be the successor of the Gameboy Advance SP during that time. The reason for the console to have the name IRIS is because it will be the fifth installment in the Gameboy line so his team chose the symbol of May from the Hanafuda cards, the iris. They didn't have plans to add a second screen to the console but plans have changed.

The late Nintendo President, Satoru Iwata, received a call from the former President during that time, Hiroshi Yamauchi and said that Yamauchi wants to have two screens on the console the company is working on. According to Iwata, Yamauchi wanted "a bit like the multi-screen Game and Watch" console. Okada said that everyone is against on the idea of having two screens on a console. He said that "it didn't make any sense."

Okada tried to appeal to the former President to rethink about this idea since they are working on the next console in the Gameboy line. Unfortunately, Iwata stopped him and asked him to give it a shot. Okada also mentioned that Iwata is also against the idea of having a second screen on a console. He rallied his team and informed that he has working experience with double screens and scrap out the IRIS project for a new one called Nitro. Nitro eventually became Nintendo DS, which was released in 2004.

Unknown to them, the Nintendo DS has been received with overwhelmingly positive feedbacks. Because of it, the Nintendo DS became the company's most successful gaming console. The DS competed with Sony's own portable console, the Playstation Portable but the DS gained the upper hand because of the addition of the second screen and touch-input screen. The DS managed to sell 150 million units back then, surpassing the PSP who sold only half of it. Because of the popularity of the DS console, Nintendo pushed forward with iterations of the console such as the DSLite and DSi series before developing the latest iteration of the DS line, the 3DS.