Lance Barr, designer of the North American NES and SNES consoles, has announced his departure from Nintendo after an almost 39 year stint.
More recently, Barr helped design the Wii’s Nunchuck controller (thanks, Nintendo Life).
Barr first joined Nintendo in 1982 as a design and brand director, initially working on arcade cabinets. But it was his redesigns of the Japanese Famicom and Super Famicom which saw him leaving a permanent mark on video games history.
DF Retro: The Nintendo Launch Spectacular – NES/SNES/N64/GCN/Wii Watch on YouTube
Here’s Barr talking to Nintendojo in 2005 about the process of redesigning the Famicom for the Western market:
“The original design of the NES was worked out over several months including a stay of a couple of months while I worked in Japan at NCL. The design was conceived as a wireless, modular system, designed to look more like a sleek stereo system rather than a electronic toy. After the first public showing in the US at the Consumer Electronics Show, I was asked to redesign the case based on new engineering requirements. To reduce costs, the wireless function was eliminated, as well as some of the modular components such as the keyboard and data recorder.