From R.O.B. to Rhythm Heaven: The Legacy of Nintendo’s Most Subversive Studio

How R&D1 married form and function to create some of Nintendo’s most interesting oddities.

By: Bob Mackey
February 15, 2012

Take one look at the recently released Rhythm Heaven Fever, and you’ll wonder if it’s actually a Nintendo game. This waggle-free two-button experience serves as a major contradiction to Nintendo’s Skyward Sword, which perfected the one-to-one motion controls we all wanted from Twilight Princess back in 2006. But, as fans of the series know, Rhythm Heaven’s reductive approach isn’t an intentional attempt to undermine Nintendo’s evolving motion technology; rather, this colorful, candy-coated musical rollercoaster evokes a philosophy pioneered by Research and Development 1, an internal studio which eventually stood as the iconoclast to their parent company. And even after a major 2005 restructuring dismantled R&D1’s 35-year history of bizarre and fascinating experiments, the team’s quirky design sense lives on today with Software Planning and Development Group No. 1, a Nintendo studio now responsible for offbeat series like Rhythm Heaven and Wario Ware.