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).
Okada says:
Satoru Okada said:
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:
Okada adds:
Satoru Okada said:
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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