For all his genius and how instrumental he was to Nintendo's success, it turns out Gunpei Yokoi is not responsible for how great the Game Boy ended up being. That's according to Florent Gorges's L'Histoire de Nintendo, volume 4 : 1989-1999, l'incroyable histoire de la Game Boy, which came out a few months ago in France but has yet to be translated into English.
As the book goes through the history of the Game Boy, it reveals that Gunpei Yokoi was much less instrumental to the creation of the Game Boy than previously thought. Instead, the author finds out - much to his confusion as a Yokoi scholar - that, without Satoru Okada, Takehiro Izushi and Yoshihiro Taki, and if Yokoi had had his way, the Game Boy would have looked like an evolved Game & Watch, a toy meant to provide some throwaway fun, rather than a fully-fledged system with many games.
Here are a few quotes from the book, all translated by yours truly. Keep in mind that these are all unofficial translations (though I am a native speaker).
Okada says:
Since Okada might be biased, the author further asks Hip Tanaka (who was involved in many projects across divisions, including R&D1) to confirm or deny:
Okada adds:
The book goes on to say that there was an unhealthy competition between Yokoi (R&D1) and Masayuki Uemura (R&D2, which was responsible for the Famicom and, later, the Super Famicom). The two of them simply didn't get along with one another, and Yokoi's pride, the author muses, wouldn't allow him to make the Game Boy into a "portable Famicom" like Okada wanted, because that would be like admitting that the much younger Uemura's Famicom was a brilliant idea. Uemura joined Nintendo much later than Yokoi, so this would have hurt at a time when seniority was such a core concept of operating a Japanese business. It'd be an admission of inferiority, essentially. Okada didn't care about the feud between Yokoi and Uemura, of course, so he did all he could to get closer to his ideal of a portable Famicom. Mind you, this notion of pitting different divisions against each other in a highly competitive fashion was Yamauchi's strategy, but it seems that competition was especially unhealthy between Yokoi/R&D1 and Uemura/R&D2 apparently. I'm assuming that volume 2 (NES) goes into this too, but I haven't read it yet.
In other words, it's not just that Yokoi was only one of several main contributors to the creation of the Game Boy - as big projects like this always are a collective effort -, but that his vision would have actively hurt the end product. "Yokoi is the creator of the Game Boy" is, quite simply, a myth at this point. I suppose if you were to designate one person, it would be Okada, but again, it was a team effort.
The rest of the book is just as good, and honestly, some parts are movie material. It gets into the dirtier side of Nintendo's internal and external dynamics. The section about how the Game Boy screen was chosen is mind-blowing. I never imagined how much trouble the whole project ran into, and how it came this close to being cancelled altogether. To think the Game Boy almost never existed! It's just so fascinating to me. If you can read French, you have to read it.
Lastly, please note that the point is not to act like Yokoi sucked or anything. He's a visionary, a great inventor, and he helped shape Nintendo into what it was back then. The point is to show how his mentality (i.e. that of a craftsman with little regard for ambition who didn't take pressure well), while good in some respects, also had its flaws, and to show that other contributors deserve more credit in this particular instance (the book goes over them as well, with many direct quotes from them).
As the book goes through the history of the Game Boy, it reveals that Gunpei Yokoi was much less instrumental to the creation of the Game Boy than previously thought. Instead, the author finds out - much to his confusion as a Yokoi scholar - that, without Satoru Okada, Takehiro Izushi and Yoshihiro Taki, and if Yokoi had had his way, the Game Boy would have looked like an evolved Game & Watch, a toy meant to provide some throwaway fun, rather than a fully-fledged system with many games.
Here are a few quotes from the book, all translated by yours truly. Keep in mind that these are all unofficial translations (though I am a native speaker).
There were two camps [within R&D1] in constant conflict with each other: Gunpei Yokoi (the director of the division)'s camp and Satoru Okada's (the assistant director). The two men strongly disagreed with each other as to what direction the DMG project [i.e. the Game Boy project] should take. Meetings would end in disaster with people calling each other names on a near-daily basis.
Okada says:
Satoru Okada said:I was completely against Yokoi's vision, and even though he was my immediate superior, I would always stand up to him. [...] One day, during a meeting, he finally snapped. He was fed up, and so he said to me: "Okay, I've had enough! Do what you want!" So I replied: "Fine! Are you giving me full responsibility for everything?", and since he agreed, the Game Boy project took the path that seemed safest to me..."
Since Okada might be biased, the author further asks Hip Tanaka (who was involved in many projects across divisions, including R&D1) to confirm or deny:
Hirokazu Tanaka said:I don't think I'm wrong in saying that Okada was the one who pushed for the Game Boy to use interchangeable ROM cartridges and a link cable for data transfers. Yokoi wanted someting much more simple, much closer to a toy. He let Okada convince him and greenlit his ideas. However, I recall that Yokoi didn't want Famicom-like interchangeable cartridges initially, and he hadn't come up with the idea of the link cable... The cable came from Okada, really."
Okada adds:
Satoru Okada said:To give you a concrete comparison, Yokoi's Game Boy would have been reminiscent of Milton Bradley's Microvision handheld. [...] For instance, Yokoi didn't care whether the Game Boy would have third-party games or not. For him, the Game Boy would be a short-lived project, much like the Game & Watch games [...] On the other hand, I really wanted the Game Boy to resemble what R&D2 had achieved with its Famicom. [...] I was really motivated by the prospect of making an actual, enhanced portable Famicom, with an even more powerful Ricoh CPU. Sure, the screen would probably have been black and white still, but this would have allowed us to port games easily!
The book goes on to say that there was an unhealthy competition between Yokoi (R&D1) and Masayuki Uemura (R&D2, which was responsible for the Famicom and, later, the Super Famicom). The two of them simply didn't get along with one another, and Yokoi's pride, the author muses, wouldn't allow him to make the Game Boy into a "portable Famicom" like Okada wanted, because that would be like admitting that the much younger Uemura's Famicom was a brilliant idea. Uemura joined Nintendo much later than Yokoi, so this would have hurt at a time when seniority was such a core concept of operating a Japanese business. It'd be an admission of inferiority, essentially. Okada didn't care about the feud between Yokoi and Uemura, of course, so he did all he could to get closer to his ideal of a portable Famicom. Mind you, this notion of pitting different divisions against each other in a highly competitive fashion was Yamauchi's strategy, but it seems that competition was especially unhealthy between Yokoi/R&D1 and Uemura/R&D2 apparently. I'm assuming that volume 2 (NES) goes into this too, but I haven't read it yet.
In other words, it's not just that Yokoi was only one of several main contributors to the creation of the Game Boy - as big projects like this always are a collective effort -, but that his vision would have actively hurt the end product. "Yokoi is the creator of the Game Boy" is, quite simply, a myth at this point. I suppose if you were to designate one person, it would be Okada, but again, it was a team effort.
The rest of the book is just as good, and honestly, some parts are movie material. It gets into the dirtier side of Nintendo's internal and external dynamics. The section about how the Game Boy screen was chosen is mind-blowing. I never imagined how much trouble the whole project ran into, and how it came this close to being cancelled altogether. To think the Game Boy almost never existed! It's just so fascinating to me. If you can read French, you have to read it.
Lastly, please note that the point is not to act like Yokoi sucked or anything. He's a visionary, a great inventor, and he helped shape Nintendo into what it was back then. The point is to show how his mentality (i.e. that of a craftsman with little regard for ambition who didn't take pressure well), while good in some respects, also had its flaws, and to show that other contributors deserve more credit in this particular instance (the book goes over them as well, with many direct quotes from them).
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