It was preceded by the Creative Department, a team of designers with backgrounds in art responsible for many different tasks, to which Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka originally belonged.

Nintendo EAD was best known for its work on games in the Donkey Kong, Mario, The Legend of Zelda, F-Zero, Star Fox, Animal Crossing, Pikmin, and Wii series.

[6] Nintendo also drafted a couple of key graphic designers to the department including Takashi Tezuka and Kenji Miki.

Hiroshi Ikeda's creative team had many video game design ideas but was lacking the necessary programming power to make it all happen.

The phenomenal sales of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda fueled the expansion of the department with young game designers such as Hideki Konno, Katsuya Eguchi, Kensuke Tanabe, Takao Shimizu, who would later become producers themselves.

This venture allowed the Technology Development Department to become more prominent in the 3D era, where they programmed several of Nintendo EAD's 3D games with SRD.

Prior to that, most programming was outsourced to SRD Co. Ltd.[11] In 1997, Miyamoto explained that about twenty to thirty employees were devoted to each Nintendo EAD title during the course of its development.

[12] In the advent of launching both the GameCube and Game Boy Advance, Nintendo sought to change the structure of its corporate management.

In June 2000, in an attempt to include both software and hardware experts in the board of directors, EAD and Integrated Research & Development general managers, Shigeru Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda respectively, entered the body.

To fill Miyamoto's void as a producer, there were a series of promotions in the division: starting with long-time Miyamoto colleague Takashi Tezuka, as deputy general manager, as well as promoting several senior directors like Eiji Aonuma, Hideki Konno, Takao Shimizu, Tadashi Sugiyama and Katsuya Eguchi to producers overseeing their own development teams in the division.

[14] The Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development division was headed by Nintendo-veteran Takashi Tezuka who acted as general manager.

The Nintendo EAD Tokyo Software Development Department was created in 2002 with the goal of bringing in fresh new talent from the capital of Japan who wouldn't be willing to travel hundreds of miles away to Kyoto.

Takao Shimizu (original manager and producer) and Yoshiaki Koizumi (director) began hiring several recruits in Tokyo coming from several established companies like SEGA, Koei, and Square-Enix.

After the release of Super Mario Galaxy, Koizumi was promoted to manager and producer and officially opened Tokyo Software Development Group No.