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[Tripon]

"The technology was there to do color. But I wanted us to do black and white anyway...Once you start playing the game, the colors aren’t important. You get drawn, mentally, into the world of the game."

- Famed Nintendo engineer Gunpei Yokoi discusses the philosophy underpinning his design of the Game Boy.

Game Boy creator Gunpei Yokoi is famous for his "Lateral Thinking With Withered Technology" approach to design, and in an interview from 1997 newly translated and published by Shmuplations the former Nintendo exec shares some intriguing opinions on his approach to game design and the state of console game development in the '90s.

Yokoi: Actually, it was difficult to get Nintendo to understand. Partly, I used my status in the company to push them into it. (laughs) After we released the Game Boy, one of my staff came to me with a grim expression on his face: “there’s a new handheld on the market similar to ours…” The first thing I asked was: “is it a color screen, or monochrome?” He told me it was color, and I reassured him, “Then we’re fine.” (laughs)

Yokoi: When I was a kid, there were so many things I wanted to do that weren’t possible because they were too expensive or the technology wasn’t there. Now that 10 or 20 years have passed, those ideas I had given up on can actually be realized. The “My Puzzle” amusement machine 1 is one of those ideas from 20 years ago. Had I tried to make it then it would have cost around 30 million yen (roughly 300,000 USD). (laughs) There were no video printers back then either. So in that sense, I think we have a lot of opportunities today to fulfill the dreams of our youth.

http://shmuplations.com/yokoi/
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...endos_struggle_to_understand_his_Game_Boy.php

If Yokoi was alive today, he would totally get how to do VR at a cheap price.

 

[Jotamide]

http://shmuplations.com/yokoi/
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...endos_struggle_to_understand_his_Game_Boy.php

If Yokoi was alive today, he would totally get how to do VR at a cheap price.

He would probably do it with the Wiimote, like that famous video back then.

 

[@MUWANdo]

He already did VR at a cheap price and my eyeballs will never forgive him.

 

[Zabka]

http://shmuplations.com/yokoi/
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...endos_struggle_to_understand_his_Game_Boy.php

If Yokoi was alive today, he would totally get how to do VR at a cheap price.

I can't tell if this is a joke or not

 

[sixteen-bit]

Shmuplations does great work

 

[SoulUnison]

If Yokoi was alive today, he would totally get how to do VR at a cheap price.

There's an astounding amount of irony to this statement.
I can only hope it's sarcasm that I'm not detecting.

 

[Tripon]

Guys, Yokoi knew the Virtual Boy wasn't VR. It was a marketing gimmick and he knew the tech wasn't ready at a good price. He was forced by Nintendo to create a device to ship to market due to the delay of the N64.

 

[iMerc]

imagine all the things he would have possibly come up with to date, had he not died.

i would love to hear about his thinking behind the design of the wonderswan, too.
i always thought the layout was slightly out of left field.

i love guys like him.
yokoi, miyamoto, suzuki, kutaragi, yamauchi, etc. all these 'creative' type guys who our industry wouldn't be where it is today had they never been involved.

i hate the idea of 'suits' deciding what products a company should release. i don't want 'by the numbers', predictable, pop, conformist technology….. i want crazy, bold, left of centre thinking to be at the forefront of gaming boundaries.

for the most part, people really don't give these guys the respect they deserve. no really.
i'm not talking about meaningless awards & accolades, i mean actually respect for the different energy/vibe that they bring.
people like them, they will often fall & make mistakes, and when they do, everybody conveniently forgets all the fantastic contributions they've made, and the ones they have YET to make, should they continue to be surrounded be encouragement & positivity.
here's to the next generation of crazy ones.

 

[koopas]

Can anyone expand on the Yakuza death theory furthur? I know its a myth but it makes no sense.

 

[Duderz]

Can anyone expand on the Yakuza death theory furthur? I know its a myth but it makes no sense.

More of a bad joke than anything.

Intriguing article. Thanks for sharing!

 

[RM8]

i would love to hear about his thinking behind the design of the wonderswan, too.
i always thought the layout was slightly out of left field.

WonderSwan had an awesome design, really. Very comfortable (for a handheld of its time, I guess) and had the possibility of vertical and horizontal orientation depending on the game. It only needed a better d-pad, but even then, I can play Pocket Fighters on it, lol.

 

[wrowa]

The way you quoted the GameBoy part is kind of misleading though. It wasn't the GameBoy in and on itself that Nintendo struggled to understand, but the decision to only use a monochrome display.

 

[blackoak]

He already did VR at a cheap price and my eyeballs will never forgive him.

There's actually a cool 1995 interview with Yokoi about the VB here: http://12kai.com/virtual_boy.html
I'll either add it to the list or get to it myself next month, as a nice coda to this interview.