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(Last Updated (CEST): 2025-06-17 17:33)

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Summary

The Nintendo GAME PROCESSOR is a development kit from 1994 based on the Super Famicom hardware with a 32-bit computer inside, focused on making game creation easier for the Super Famicom.

MARIO FACTORY is currently the only known software made for it, which can make games by using a base game genre and samples (such as MARIO BROS.), with editors made for the Super Famicom Mouse in mind, and sometimes a specifically made keyboard for it.

As you play the game, you can pause the gameplay and edit graphics, sounds or programming, and unpause where you left off and see the changes you made immediately. Once you're done with making the game, you can export the game on a Game Processor RAM Cassette and play it on commercial Super Famicom hardware.

The only known use of it has been in HAL College of Technology & Design in 1994, using the software MARIO FACTORY to make games.

History

The earliest reporting (found so far) of the Game Processor was in Weekly Famitsu #219 (1993-02-26), alongside the end of the Nintendo-Dentsu Game Seminar, a seminar about teaching game design, which was around for 1990 to 1992 included.

According to Micom's report, the motivation to create the Game Processor came from the fact that their Game Seminars were always flooded with more applicants than they could manage in Tokyo and Osaka.

The Game Processor would allow more people to learn how to make games, thanks to their newly formed partnership with Nomura Research Institute who would provide a network where Game Processor users would have access to Nintendo's lectures about game development, and would able to exchange with other users including co-development of games with each other.

The hardware was originally announced to release later in 1993 for less than 100 000 yen.

Later in Weekly Famitsu #234 (1993-06-11), Nintendo would announce a new game design course at the Nintendo backed HAL College of Technology & Design, planned to be established in April 1994, with two courses of either 2 years or 4 years, using the newly announced game making computer.