Intelligent Systems entered the video game industry as a one-man team, named Toru Narihiro, who was hired by Nintendo to port over Famicom Disk software into the standard ROM-cartridge format that was being used by the NES outside Japan. The team soon became an auxiliary program unit for Nintendo (like HAL Laboratory originally) that provided system tools and hired people to program, fix, or port Nintendo-developed software. Thus much of the team's original discography contains minuscule contributions to several big Nintendo R&D1 and Nintendo EAD titles.
Chief programmer Toru Narihiro programmed his first actual game software with Famicom Wars and Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ryū to Hikari no Tsurugi towards the end of the Famicom's life cycle, although the game design, graphic design, and music was provided by the Nintendo R&D1 team. But because of Narihiro's success, Intelligent Systems began to hire graphic designers, programmers, and even musicians to extend the company from an auxiliary–tool developer to an actual game development group. The company would continue to develop later entries in the Wars and Fire Emblem franchises.
Intelligent Systems currently focuses on 3DS development, and has developed games for all of Nintendo's previous handhelds and consoles.
Famous quotes containing the words intelligent and/or systems:
“You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion.... Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat’s meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“What is most original in a man’s nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn’t have been content to enjoy the atmosphere.”
—Leonard Cohen (b. 1934)