Gunpei Yokoi: The Visionary Behind Nintendo's Golden Age
Gunpei Yokoi, a Japanese video game designer, is best known for his innovative contributions to Nintendo, including the Game & Watch, Game Boy, and the iconic D-pad. He championed a philosophy of using 'withered technology' to create engaging and affordable games, shaping the company's success and influencing the industry for generations.
Japanese video game designer (1941–1997)
Gunpei Yokoi
横井 軍平
Yokoi in 1995
Born
(1941-09-10)September 10, 1941
Kyoto, Japan
Died
October 4, 1997(1997-10-04) (aged 56)
Komatsu, Ishikawa, Japan
Alma mater
Doshisha University
Occupations
Toy maker
game designer
game producer
Years active
1965–1997
Gunpei Yokoi (横井 軍平, Yokoi Gunpei, September 10, 1941 – October 4, 1997), sometimes transliterated as Gumpei Yokoi, was a Japanese toy maker and video game designer. As a long-time Nintendo employee, he was best known as creator of the Game & Watch handheld system, inventor of the cross-shaped Control Pad, the original designer of the Game Boy, and producer of a few long-running and critically acclaimed video game franchises such as Metroid and Kid Icarus.
Career
Yokoi graduated from Doshisha University with a degree in electronics. He was first hired by Nintendo in 1965 to maintain the assembly-line machines used to manufacture its hanafuda cards.
In 1966, Hiroshi Yamauchi, president of Nintendo, came to a hanafuda factory where Yokoi was working and took notice of a toy, an extending arm that Yokoi made for his own amusement during spare time while doing maintenance. Yamauchi ordered Yokoi to develop it as a proper product for the Christmas rush. The Ultra Hand was a huge success, and Yokoi was asked to work on other Nintendo toys, including the Ten Billion Barrel puzzle, a miniature remote-controlled vacuum cleaner called the Chiritory, a baseball-throwing machine called the Ultra Machine, and a "Love Tester". He worked on toys until the company decided to make video games in 1974, when he became one of its first game designers, only preceded by Genyo Takeda. While traveling on the Shinkansen, Yokoi supposedly saw a bored businessman playing with an LCD calculator by pressing the buttons. Yokoi then got the idea for a watch that doubled as a miniature video gaming pastime.
In 1981, Yamauchi appointed Yokoi to supervise Donkey Kong, an arcade game created by Shigeru Miyamoto. Yokoi explained many of the intricacies of game design to Miyamoto at the beginning of his career, and the project only came to be approved after Yokoi brought Miyamoto's game ideas to the president's attention.
After the worldwide success of Donkey Kong, Yokoi continued to work with Miyamoto on the next Mario game, Mario Bros. He proposed the multiplayer concept and convinced his co-worker to give Mario some superhuman abilities, such as the ability to jump unharmed from great heights.
Yokoi is best known for his contribution in the creation of the Game Boy.Yokoi's Virtual Boy (1995)
After Mario Bros., Yokoi produced several R&D1 games, such as Kid Icarus and Metroid. He designed R.O.B. and the Game Boy, the latter of which became a worldwide success. Another of his creations, the Virtual Boy, was a commercial failure. Nintendo has denied that the Virtual Boy's poor performance in the market was the reason for Yokoi's subsequent departure from the company, holding that his retirement was "absolutely coincidental" to the market performance of any Nintendo hardware. According to his Nintendo and Koto colleague Yoshihiro Taki, Yokoi had originally decided to retire at age 50 to do as he pleased but had simply delayed it. According to David Sheff's book Game Over, Yokoi never actually intended for the console to be released in its present form. However, Nintendo pushed the Virtual Boy to market so that it could focus development resources on the Nintendo 64.
WonderSwan
Amid the failure of the Virtual Boy and the launch of the more successful Game Boy Pocket, Yokoi left Nintendo on August 15, 1996, after thirty-one years at the company. Leaving with several of his subordinates to form a new company called Koto, Yokoi led the development of the Bandai WonderSwan handheld game console.
Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology
Yokoi said "The Nintendo way of adapting technology is not to look for the state of the art but to utilize mature technology that can be mass-produced cheaply." He articulated his philosophy of "Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology" (枯れた技術の水平思考, Kareta Gijutsu no Suihei Shikō) (also translated as "Lateral Thinking with Seasoned Technology"), in the book Yokoi Gunpei Game House. "Withered technology" in this context refers to a mature technology which is cheap and well understood. "Lateral thinking" refers to finding radical new ways of using such technology. Yokoi held that toys and games do not necessarily require cutting-edge technology; novel and fun gameplay are more important. In the interview, he suggested that expensive cutting-edge technology can get in the way of developing a new product.
Game & Watch was developed based on this philosophy. At the time of its development, Sharp and Casio were fiercely competing in the digital calculator market. For this reason, there was a glut of liquid crystal displays and semiconductors. The "lateral thinking" was to find an original and fun use for this cheap and abundant technology. The NES and Game Boy were developed under a similar philosophy. In the handheld market, Yokoi's refusal to adopt a color display for the Game Boy, in favor of long battery life, is cited as the main reason it prevailed against Sega's Game Gear and Atari's Lynx.
Satoru Iwata, CEO of Nintendo from 2002 until his death in 2015, claimed that this philosophy has been passed on to the disciples of Yokoi, such as Miyamoto, and it continues to show itself in Nintendo's then current use of technology, with the highly successful Nintendo DS and Wii.
The Wii's internal technology was similar to that of Nintendo's previous home console, the GameCube, and was not as advanced in terms of computational capability and multimedia versatility compared to its competitors: the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Instead, the system offered something completely different by introducing motion-based controls to the console market in an attempt to change the ways video games are played, and consequently, to widen the audience for video games in general. This strategy demonstrated Nintendo's belief that graphical advancement isn't the only way to make progress in gaming technology; indeed, after the Wii's overwhelming success, Sony and Microsoft released their own motion control peripherals. Nintendo's emphasis on peripherals for the Wii has also been pointed to as an example of Yokoi's "lateral thinking" at work.
Death
On October 4, 1997, Yokoi was riding in a car driven by his associate Etsuo Kiso on the Hokuriku Expressway, when the vehicle rear-ended a truck. After the two men had left the car to inspect the damage, Yokoi was hit and injured by a passing car. The driver of the car that hit Yokoi in the second accident was Gen Tsushima, a member of the tourism industry. Yokoi's death was confirmed two hours later. Kiso suffered only a fractured rib.
Legacy
The title of his main biography from 2010 translates from Japanese as Father of Games – Gunpei Yokoi, the Man Who Created Nintendo's DNA. A 1997 book's title translates to Yokoi's House of Gaming, which was explored in English in 2010 by Tokyo Scum Brigade. A 2014 book about him is Gunpei Yokoi: The Life & Philosophy of Nintendo's God of Toys.
In 2003, Yokoi posthumously received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Game Developers Association. GameTrailers placed him on their lists for the "Top Ten Game Creators". An art gallery in Japan created an art exhibit in 2010 titled "The Man Who Was Called the God of Games" featuring all his key Nintendo works. In 1999, Bandai began releasing a series of handheld puzzle games named Gunpey as a tribute to their original creator, Yokoi.
Works
Designer
Ultra Hand (1966)
Ultra Machine (1968)
Love Tester (1969)
Light Ray Gun SP Series (1970)
Eleconga (1970)
NB Block Crater (1970)
Ultra Scope (1971)
Light Ray Telephone LT (1971)
Lefty RX (1972)
Time Shock (1972)
Laser Clay Shooting System (1973)
Wild Gunman (1974)
Shooting Trainer (1974)
Light Ray Gun Custom Series (1976)
Duck Hunt (1977)
Battle Shark Skyhawk (1977)
Radio Controlled Cleaner (1979)
Nintendo Tumbler Puzzle (1980)
Game & Watch (1980)
Computer Mahjong (1982)
D-pad (1983)
Famicom Controller (1983)
R.O.B. (1985)
NES Zapper (1985)
Game Boy (1989)
Super Scope (1992)
Virtual Boy (1995)
Game Boy Pocket (1996)
WonderSwan (1999, released posthumously)
Gunpey (1999, released posthumously)
Producer
Donkey Kong (1981)
Donkey Kong Jr. (1982)
Mario Bros. (1983)
Donkey Kong 3 (1983)
Wild Gunman (1984)
Duck Hunt (1984)
Hogan's Alley (1984)
Urban Champion (1984)
Balloon Fight (1985)
Wrecking Crew (1985)
Stack-Up (1985)
Gyromite (1985)
Gumshoe (1986)
Metroid (1986)
Kid Icarus (1986)
Nakayama Miho no Tokimeki High School (1987)
Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir (1988)
Famicom Wars (1988)
Tetris (1989)
Super Mario Land (1989)
Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind (1989)
Solar Striker (1990)
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light (1990)
