Nintendo Software Technology

Nintendo Software Technology Corporation, doing business as Nintendo Software Technology (NST), is an American video 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 worldwide. The company was founded by Minoru Arakawa, Claude Comair and Scott Tsumura in 1998 and is located inside of Nintendo of America's headquarters in Redmond, Washington. The establishment took place in 1998 through a collaboration with the private university DigiPen 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, Bionic Commando: Elite Forces, was released for the Game Boy Color in 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, Wave Race: Blue Storm, 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, senior staff 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 problem was the environments. This dispute, among others, made the project drag on for a number of years, before it was completely abandoned in 2009 and a large number of staff were made redundant. DigiPen's Main Campus was based in the same building as theirs until 2010.