Yokoi Gunpei's House of Gaming: The Maverick (Part 3/3)

Yokoi's untimely death coincided with release of the ill-fated Virtual Boy and his departure from Nintendo, casting a tragic shadow over the last chapter of his life. Yokoi Gunpei's House of Gaming (横井軍平ゲーム館) illuminates this dark episode, alluding to ways in which Yokoi continues to be even more relevant now than in life.

Sometime during Nintendo’s transition from the pixel-perfect Super Nintendo to the anti-aliasing-unfriendly N64, Yokoi lost interest in creating current-gen games. In his eyes, all the good ideas had run their course, and future reiterations could only rehash what had come before. There is the common misconception that the commercial failure of the Virtual Boy forced Yokoi to leave Nintendo. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yokoi, over 50 at the time, had long since planned to retire and establish Koto Laboratory to focus on design he believed in. The Virtual Boy’s mission was twofold: Firstly, offer a parting gift to the company who graciously took him in like the stray he was all those years ago. Secondly, give a wake-up call to an industry driven mad by processor speeds and flashy graphics.

Despite being lauded for its 3-D capabilities, the Virtual Boy was never intended as a next-gen system. Rather, it tried to take gaming back to its arcade roots while crafting a new experience with enhanced visual depth. Once again, Yokoi stripped technology down to the bare essentials to make gaming more accessible for the masses. The result, of course, was disastrous. Though well meaning, all the lateral thinking in the world couldn’t save the system from itself.

The Virtual Boy’s failure was a blow to his ego, and couldn’t have come at a worse time. If he went ahead with his retirement as planned, the public would take it at face value as admission of defeat. If he stayed at Nintendo to scrub out the blemish on his track record, he would be developing for systems he didn’t believe in.  

Yokoi opted for a concession. His last job for Nintendo would be producing the Game Boy Pocket, a New Game+ that would take him back to his origins with his integrity intact. The circle was now complete.

The success of the Game Boy Pocket kept the door from hitting his ass on the way out, but more importantly, it validated Yokoi’s design philosophy. The Game Boy’s core technology, on its last legs when first released in 1989, managed to stand up against proportionately behemoth systems over half a decade later. Push the hands of time further forward, and titles from that intermediate dark period between sprites and polygons are nearly unplayable in retrospect. Yokoi didn’t need the Virtual Boy to wage his guerrilla war against the N64 and PlayStation. The Game Boy was the only  armament he would ever need to dominate on all fronts.

There's something familiar about this clamshell case.

Media publications allude to the fact that Yokoi left Nintendo out of shame, his legacy cast to the wayside. In some ways the company is still living in the shadow of its once golden child. Yokoi, being the OG that he is, continues to put out greatest hits posthumously. The Game & Watch Donkey Kong's dual screens projected the future of the company’s handhelds from way back in 1982. Similarly, Donkey Konga is a not-so subtle homage to the Ele-Conga electric bongo. Most recently, the buzz surrounding the upcoming 3DS makes you wonder if the only sin committed by the black-and-red sheep of the family, the Virtual Boy, was of being born too soon.

I'm not chiding Nintendo for cribbing Yokoi’s ideas. That’s exactly how the man would have wanted it. He was neither a technical wiz nor a business mogul. He was a product developer, and only smart enough to know that he needed to farm out the heavy mental lifting to actualize his inventions. Patents were a boring nuisance that he happily relinquished to anyone up to the mind-numbing paperwork. Yokoi understood the inherent limits of a sonority-ruled system that smothered the creative spark of young inventors. He would rather give them the kudos for his work and help them up the totem pole to a position where their voices could be heard. Raising the next generation of designers up on his shoulders was a far greater reward than empty accolades.

Yokoi has contributed more to video games than we will ever know. They may not exist in the west in their current capacity if not for him. The market crash of 1983 made parents and investors leery of anything branded as a “video game.” The American public had been burnt one time too many by shoddy ports and fly-by-night operations. Nintendo of America circumvented this fallout by presenting itself not as a gaming system, but as an entertainment system. Backed by Yokoi’s peripherals, such as the zapper and R.O.B, the NES promised to be the next step in interactive entertainment, far removed from the shady game systems of yesterday.

A million-seller used to signify a bonafide classic. Now it’s the low water profit mark for a studio to stay afloat. Developers are feeling the squeeze of exorbitant production coasts, inflated to make the best out of bloated system specs. Consumers seem listless as well. The Wii and the DS domination over the X-Box 360 and PSP, not to mention a glut of retro remakes and downloads, suggest that consumers want something simpler from their virtual realities. The pendulum swings back and forth between elegance and opulence. It’s only a matter of time before its lateral trajectory takes it back to Yokoi’s simplified sensibilities.

BONUS STAGE: Speculation Surrounding His Death

Yokoi was killed in a car crash on October 4th, 1997. He was being driven through Komatsu City in the Ishikawa prefecture by Etsuo Kiso, a Nintendo businessman, when they came across a minor fender bender in the road. The pair stepped out to investigate when a third vehicle slammed into theirs, crushing Yokoi between the cars.

The mysterious circumstances surrounding his death have led many to wonder if Nintendo didn't take out a hit on their ex-employee. Unlikely, yes, but don't be so quick to discount Nintendo's mob connections.

Nintendo, based in Kyoto, got their start producing hana-fuda playing cards, a facet of Yakuza gambling houses. Urban legend has it that this tied them in with Kyoto's most powerful Yakuza family, the Aizu-Kotetsu Kai, going so far as to suggest that many of their factory workers were in fact gangsters! Likewise, it's whispered in the bowels of 2-chan that Nintendo flexed this muscle to rub out Yokoi for both the failure of the Virtual Boy and his betrayal with the Wonder Swan.

Consider the step-up:

The Ishikawa prefecture is a mere six hour drive from Kyoto, putting it well within reach of the Aizu-Kotetsu Kai. Why was Yokoi on a road trip with his past employer, in a backwater town like Komatsu of all places? And what of the third mysterious car that slammed into him with all-too-perfect timing? There is a suspicious lack of concrete information regarding the accident. Of course, claims made by the whistle-blowers are equally insubstantial. The truth has long since been buried together with the man's potential for innovation.

Yokoi Gunpei's House of Gaming: The Regulator (Part 2/3)

From software mechanics to hardware processes, we take for granted the many precepts that rule gaming,. Yokoi Gunpei's House of Gaming (横井軍平ゲーム館) expounds upon his role in institutionalizing many of the features we instinctively know today.

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Consider the controller, that cold hunk of plastic we hold in our hands that provides a visceral link to virtual worlds. Why is it designed the way it is? Who decided to put the directional input on the left, with face buttons on the right, and that it should be operated with our thumbs? Out of all possible configurations, how did we end up where we are? To understand its evolution, we need to first observe it in its primordial state.

Flash back to 1978 and the release of Space Invaders. Taito’s runaway hit becomes an international phenomenon that inadvertently sets a number of industry standards. The cabinets were built with the joystick on the left side and the fire button on the right. Logically, you’d expect to control the fickle directional input with your dominant, right hand, but it was not to be. Perhaps the designers felt that the firing button demanded more finesse than scooting back and forth. Or that conventional controls would cut into profits by flattening the learning curve. In any case, the setup stuck, and going against their better judgment, future developers felt obliged to give consumers what they were accustomed to.

The industry’s next killer app was the Game & Watch. Released in 1980, it attempted to transplant the arcade experience, control scheme and all, into to a slim, portable body. Yokoi and his team tried every trick in the book to squeeze the jutting joystick into a finite space, even entertaining the idea of a breast-shaped flick-stick, which unfortunately proved too round and firm to fit into the casing. Plus the teats lacked finger feedback—it was difficult to tell where your thumb was in relation to the center.

Through trial and error, Yokoi’s team at R & D1 created a laundry list of everything a controller should be, based on what it wasn’t. Their resulting D-Pad solved every problem they had created for themselves. Press down on one side and the opposite rises, giving you immediate physical feedback and sense of direction. The workaround was sublime, its design transparent.



Here’s another point that seems obvious in hindsight—why do we operate the controller with our thumbs? What stopped the buttons from turning into a mini-keyboard, or, even worse, a calculator, the very device that inspired the Game & Watch? Like Japan’s burgeoning economic growth of the 80’s, the Game & Watch’s design was built upon the back of the salary man.

The term "salary man" has taken on an odious connotation, calling up caricatures of mealy-mouthed oyaji with as much self-respect and self-control as an incontinent uncle. But this wasn’t always the case! During the bubble, these oafish suits upheld the social contract they were bound to, one whose Samurai pride kept them from doing frivolous things in public, such as playing video games. In secret they all pined for a way to kill time on the commute without losing face.

Yokoi’s design gave top priority to these needs. The rectangular body fit neatly into the user’s hands, fingers cupped to keep the unit safe from view. This clandestine arrangement left the thumbs of the user open to maneuver little men around the screen, free of embarrassment.

Every subsequent controller has evolved from the Game & Watch model, which in turn is a byproduct of a culture of shame. What we take for granted as brilliant, simplistic design, wasn’t designed at all. Rather, it was born from the need to create a socially acceptable means to expand gaming to a previously untapped market. That last comment should have your shovelware-sense tingling. Nintendo has always been focused on appealing to the non-gamer. Yokoi would likely be loath to the concept of a "gamer," as it turns a harmless diversion into a demanding hobby. In fact, it was the bloated technological needs of the gamer that eventually ran Yokoi out of Nintendo towards the end of his career.

On to part 3!

Yokoi Gunpei's House of Gaming: The Toymaker (Part 1/3)

I have been fortunate to gain access to Yokoi Gunpei's House of Gaming (横井軍平ゲーム館). The book details the creative history of the mastermind behind Nintendo, Gunpei Yokoi. Upon reading it, I was struck by the man's charm and the intangible effect he has had on the gaming industry as whole. A tragic traffic accident in 1997 cut his life and career short at the age of 56, but there is still much that we can stand to learn from him, both as producers and consumers.

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Gunpei Yokoi was Nintendo’s most prolific designer, having developed classic applications such as Game & Watch, Donkey Kong, and the Game Boy. Many are familiar with his mantra of "lateral thinking of withered technology," which entails discovering new uses for outdated, cheap technology. However, this is only half of the story. This series shows his design philosophy grow organically alongside technological constraints and an inborn impishness. Imagine if Uncle Fester was a toy maker, and you won’t be far from Yokoi’s true nature.

Ultra Hand (1966)



BOING! This is the Ultra Hand! It extends and contracts and... BOING! It can grapple many things!

Cobbled together out of boredom during his frequent down time between menial machine testing tasks, the Ultra Hand was Yokoi's first commercial success and a taste of things to come. Something about the extending and contracting motion grabbed people by the heart and wouldn't let go. His future creations would likewise pull the inner child out of unsuspecting passers-by. Boing!



Ultra Machine (1968)



The Ultra Machine brought baseball from the backyard into the living room—literally. Inspired by a youth spent hitting things with sticks, his indoor pitching machine gave mothers across the country a free pass to spank their children. Its no-setup design complete with pre-packaged retractable bat helped it sell over 7 million units and established his position as breakout idea man.

Love Tester (1969)



The device operates under the same principle as a polygraph test. Two people each hold onto one of the metallic sensors and it measures the flow of electricity through your bodies. On the surface, a totally innocuous toy. The crux of the design hangs on the fact that you need to physically complete the circuit for the glorified galvanometer to work.

Yokoi, in his infinite wisdom, created the Love Tester as a vehicle to carry out every young man’s mission—an excuse to hold a cute girl’s hand! The instruction manual goes so far as to suggest the couple try kissing to pump up the meter. Before you cry foul, consider this—the added excitement will cause your hands to sweat, increasing conductivity and topping off the scale. Practicality blends seamlessly with necessity.

NB Block Crater (1970)

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Any moron can make a Lego rip-off. It takes a genius to make one that self-destructs. The craters were more like land mines—drive your car over it, and watch it pop like Perfection. Yokoi sanitized the sadistic glee of knocking one’s completed model off the table to watch it smash and scatter on the linoleum.

Lefty RX (1972)
Yokoi pursued practicality in all things. Practical price, practical production, practical usage. The twist is the impractical ways he went about achieving his goal. Remote controlled cars were prohibitively expensive when they first hit the scene. Yokoi lowered the barrier of entry to an elementary level by stripping their mechanical guts down to the barest essentials: One control channel, meaning the car can only turn one direction—left. Kids were smart enough to realize that one direction is all you need on a circular racetrack, making his economic alternative an instant hit.

Wild Gunman (1974)

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Don't be intimidated by Yokoi's impressive bandoleer of light guns—aside from the NES Zapper, its mostly festooned with creative oddities such as Wild Gunman. An arcade simulation of a Wild West shootout, this cabinet was revolutionary for its duel movie projectors that displayed film of real actors and switched reels depending on success or failure. Draw from the hip in time and put the cattle rustlers out to pasture. Loose your nerve and the town will need a new sheriff.

The 1973 oil crisis kept Wild Gunmen from reaching its full market potential, and despite its popularity, only around one hundred cabinets were produced. Rarer still is its secret love child, Fanaticism, a strip shooting game commissioned by male-dominated press clubs. Much like Wild Gunmen, it uses footage of live actors, except this time your bullets are blasting the clothes off of a blonde Swedish model. All this a decade before Bubble Bath Babes!

Ten Billion Barrel (1980)



Yokoi designed this spinning puzzle as a roundabout answer to the Rubik Cube. Ironically, he didn’t know the solution himself, reasoning that “if the balls begin lined up correctly, you should be able to put them back to where they started!”

In Germany, the toy was called The Demon’s Stone. The puzzle was so wickedly devious it must have been placed on earth by God himself as a test for man. Subsequently, Yokoi was credited not as the designer, but the discoverer, of the devilish device.

If his thought process is so free and easy in designing toys, you can only imagine what puckish impulses would surface dealing with something even more frivolous—video games! Next time we’ll explore how Yokoi helped stitch together a Frankenstein’s monster of an industry that would bring equal parts disappointment and fulfillment, grief and joy.

On to part 2!