Gunpei Yokoi (横井 軍平, Yokoi Gunpei, September 10, 1941 – October 4, 1997),
sometimes transliterated Gumpei Yokoi, was a Japanese video game designer. He was a
long-time Nintendo employee, 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.
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.[2]
In 1966, Hiroshi Yamauchi, president of Nintendo at the time, came to a hanafuda
factory where Yokoi was working at and took notice of a toy, an extending arm, that
Yokoi made for his own amusement during spare time as the company's machine
maintenance man. 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,[3] when he became one of its first game designers,
only preceded by Genyo Takeda.[4] While traveling on the Shinkansen, Yokoi 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,[5]
and went on to create Game & Watch, a line of handheld electronic games of simple
LCD animated minigames, which ran from 1980 to 1991 and had 60 variations.
In 1981, Yamauchi appointed Yokoi to supervise Donkey Kong, an arcade game created
by Shigeru Miyamoto.[6] 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.[7]
After the worldwide success of Donkey Kong, Yokoi continued to work with Miyamoto
on the next Mario game, Mario Bros.[7] 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.[7]
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."[13]
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.[16]
Game & Watch was developed based on this philosophy.[17] 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 Game Boy and NES were developed under a similar
philosophy.[18] In the handheld market, Yokoi's refusal to adopt a color display.
