The Liquid Architecture blog

As I write this, today marks the 10th death anniversary of Gunpei Yokoi. I actually had no idea who he was until I saw an obituary (I’m fairly sure it was in an issue of Nintendo Power) shortly after his tragic death in ‘97. If you’re unfamiliar with his work, I highly recommend RobotBling’s video tribute to him (via Kotaku).

Yokoi was responsible for some of the sharp hardware ideas that became Nintendo signatures. He created the awesome Game & Watch handheld LCD game series, which was the first Nintendo device to feature the four-way rocker switch controller that would become the heart of the NES controller.

They have a neat collection of these at the Nintendo World Store in Rockefeller Center. It’s certainly worth a look if you happen to be in NYC, especially if you’ve never seen a Game & Watch up close – if nothing else, it’s interesting to see how much that design influenced the look of the DS and DS Lite handhelds.

The Game Boy is perhaps the most well-known Gunpei Yokoi creation, and it’s not difficult to see why. It made Tetris a household game, got grown men and women (some without any kids) to pick up a game for the first time, and sold a ton of hardware and software throughout its various iterations.

Yokoi left Nintendo after designing the Game Boy Pocket, but his design philosophy clearly drove the entire project form start to finish. Of course, it’s hard to tell really where that “finish” is just yet, as there are still Game Boy Advance SP’s being sold out there, nearly 20 years after the Game Boy was originally introduced.

Of course, they can’t all be hits. The Yokoi-designed ROB (the Robot Operating Buddy… remember this guy?) and the Virtual Boy never really caught on. Personally, I admire the guy as much for his failed projects as the ones that worked out.

I didn’t know anyone that actually had ROB growing up. He came in at a pretty high price point, only worked with two games (Stack-Up and Gyromite), and you still had to use a controller to keep ROB in sync with what was happening onscreen. Still, ROB allowed Nintendo to deliver on the critical NES launch in the US – it looked like a toy, and helped differentiate the NES from the various Atari and Intellivision decks that were choking bargain bins in the early 80’s.

I’d even go so far as to say ROB was ahead of its time. A product of the 80’s, it relied on noisy motors to move, and a less-than-stellar solution to optically recognize what was happening onscreen. With today’s technology, a ROB that worked much better could be delivered for a fraction of the cost. After all, the Wii remote’s sensor bar allows it to relay spatial data back to the Wii flawlessly.

Beyond the simple mechanics of ROB, I’d argue that the CONCEPT behind it is very much in play today. At it’s core, the whole point of ROB is to use a fun, physical connection to the game to draw in a user that might be intimidated by the NES’s standard-issue gamepad. Isn’t that what made Guitar Hero such a rousing success? And Dance Dance Revolution? The Wii? You’d be hard pressed to find a games-related article in the mainstream press this year that doesn’t at least pay lip service to the rapid growth of the casual games market, and the mainstreaming of people that describe themselves as “gamers.”

Yokoi’s other big boo-boo was the Virtual Boy. It became the butt of jokes almost immediately after launch, with a red-and-black stereoscopic display, limited game library and awkward, isolated play style.

Yes, it’s easy to pile on the Virtual Boy. But I think this red quasi-portable tabletop system is a shining example of the “blue ocean” philosophy that drives Nintendo today, 11 years before Reggie Phils Aimes made that concept known to the world. It wasn’t designed in response to something Sega had in development, and it didn’t improve on any existing hardware with a bunch of great looking sequels.

The big N took a risk on unique concepts like Virtual Boy and ROB, and they didn’t pay off. But could a company that’s not willing to move the Virtual Boy through R&D ever introduce a system as radically different as Wii? From Miyamoto to Will Wright and everyone in between, this industry’s giants have succeeded on vision and ingenuity. Clearly, Nintendo wouldn’t be where they are today if not for Yokoi’s particular brand of vision from the beginning.