Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Gunpei Yokoi, inventor of Nintendo’s Game & Watch lines, the original Game Boy, Virtual Boy, and Bandai’s Wonder Swan. He was also at one time the general manager of Nintendo’s R&D1 group, which was responsible for such NES classics as Kid Icarus and Metroid. His life was cut short by a tragic car accident in 1997 after he had left Nintendo.
Yokoi’s driving philosophy behind his career was 「枯れた技術の水平思考」, or “Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology” (“Kareta Gijutsu no Suihei Shikou”). He always sought to find new, exiting ways of using existing, less expensive technologies, rather than developing something completely new. His Game & Watch and Game Boy designs are an obvious expression of this design philosophy, and it has largely paid off in the marketplace: his decision to stick with cheaper monochrome LCD displays on the Game Boy in order to prolong battery life helped it maintain market leadership in the face of superior offerings from Atari, SEGA, and NEC.
After his Nintendo Virtual Boy failed in the marketplace, Yokoi left Nintendo and formed his own company, Koto Laboratory and began work on the WonderSwan for Bandai. Unfortunately he died before the WonderSwan was commercially released. It is a consolation that his philosophy of 「枯れた技術の水平思考」 seems to still be benefiting Nintendo: the comparatively underpowered Wii and DS are both currently the number one selling console and handheld of this system generation.