Gunpei Yokoi 1941 -1997

-The legend that brought to us the Game&Watch and the Game Boy!

Here is a profile of one of nintendo´s finest men. He is the brain behind both the fantastic Game&Watch-games, the Game Boy and unfortunately also behind the Virtual Boy. The Metroid games are also a creation of him and his team.

Gunpei grew up in Kyoto. His father was a director of a pharmaceutical company. After Gunpei has graduated from collage with a degree in electronics he started looking for a job and was hired by Hiroshi to maintain the assembly-line machines that made Nintendo's famous Hanafunda cards. the Ultrahand and other toys In 1970 he was assigned to a new project in the new Games department. He was told of Hiroshi to do something for the christams rush. When Gunpei asked what Hiroshi had in mind he just said "Something great". Gunpei worked under Imanishi to create a department for komuki - engineering. The next day he introduced to them an expansion arm toy that he had designed before, purely for his own amusement. This was actually Nintendo's first toy ever was named the Ultrahand and sold in no less than 1.2 million copies (for about 800 yen each). After that he created more great toys such as the baseball-throwing machine for the homes called The Ultra Machine. This machine lobbed a softer version of a baseball that could be batted safely even indoors. The next thing in the "Ultra series" was a little periscope called the Ultra Scope, used to look around corners and over fences etc. This toy never sold in any greater quantities though. The next invention from Gunpei was a "lovetester" that actually became a big hit in Japan. It involved a girl and a boy holding each others hands and with their free hands holding the two handels inside the machine. The machine then tested how much "love" that was flowing between them (actually the machine only read the current passing through the two, it had nothing to do with any love or emotions)! Gunpei loved his work and he saw himself as "a cartoonist who understood movements in the world and created abstractions of them" (Gunpei's own words). Gunpei joins up with Masayuki. After the success of the love tester Gunpei Yokoi hired Masayuki Uemoura from Sharp and they began developing the Nintendo Beam Gun games using the solar cells from Sharp. They began experimenting with small solar cells to be used as sensors to detect light coming from, for example a lightgun. They began planning on a cheap lightgun that could be sold on the consumer market. At last the Nintendo Beam Gun games consisting of a lightgun and some targets (with solar cells mounted on them) were out on the market and sold in over 1 million copies. (It was sold for between 4,000 and 5,000 yen) Game & Watch When Hiroshi Yamauchi declared that Nintendo would start to sell videogames instead of toys Gunpei was asked to create "something new" and he designed a series of cheap handheld machines with LCD-display best known as Game&Watch. Gunpei also invented the famous "control-cross" that is still used on the videogame consoles even today! The Game&Watch games became a huge success worldwide.

The Light Gun series!

Donkey Kong
Then games like Pac-Man and space invaders came and Nintendo became interested in these more advanced videogames. He was told to assist a new employee at Nintendo in his work with a game that would work all around the globe. The new employee´s name was Shigeru miyamoto and the name of the games was Donkey Kong!

The Game Boy
Later the NES where released and when it was time for Nintendo to create a new handheld console they again asked Gunpei and as we all know 1989 he came up with the Game Boy which is the most successful handheld machine ever produced! The machine has sold in over 60 million copies worldwide! Gunpei and his R&D1 team has also done all the utterly brilliant Metroid games and Kid Icarus (for the NES) and Super Mario Land 1 for the GB. Unfortunately Gunpei's second last project at Nintendo was his biggest project ever became his biggest mistake. I´m refering to the Virtual Boy that was Nintendo´s biggest mistake ever! It was just to weird and most of all it did´nt had any great titles go back it up.
After that he made the Game Boy Pocket, a smaller version of the GB with a much better screen which became a big sucess and much thanks to that, the Game Boy is still THE handheld console today!

Gunpei hands in his resignation
The 15th August 1996, only weeks after the lauch of the Game Boy Pocket, Gunpei handed in his resignation. He said that it did´nt had anything to do with the failure with the Virtual Boy, he just wanted to start his own company named Koto Laboratory. Even after his resignation he continued to corporate with Nintendo and Nintendo that was going to release some of his corporation's new products. Koto Laboratory began producing different LCD keychain games and other such items. During his time at Nintendo (around 30 years!), although of all the success of his products, the success new turned to his head and he always talked about Nintendo rather than taking all the honor himself. He died in a tragicall car accident in October 4:th in 1997, 57 years old.

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