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.

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.

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.