A man sits on a train on his way home. The responsibility of a company rest on his shoulders. To his side, he notices a bored man playing with a calculator and has an idea. You might think you might have heard the story before but you’re wrong. Because this is what actually happened, was a series of bizarre coincidences and miscommunication that would lead to one product, that would change gaming forever. This is that story.

It’s the end of the 40’s and a certain young man called Hiroshi Yamauchi had just moved to Tokyo. He tells everyone he’s away to university but he was running from his family who only seem to care about work and the family business. His plan was to stretch his university days as much as possible and a live careless life of enjoyment. But it was not to be. Barely had he established himself in the new life when terrible news reaches him. His grandfather was dying and his last wish was the worst thing that he could have come up with; “Leave the company to Hiroshi”. The company of course, was “Yamauchi Nintendo”. What was he supposed to do with a card making company? If he had been cursed with this company, he was going to drag it into the modern world. No matter the traditionalist employees of his open family screamed and kicked. Some of his ideas, like western style plastic cards and even a partnership with the Walt Disney company had proven tremendously successful. But decades passed and he was getting really tired of being a card company. If they were to survive a new era, they needed to diversify, and find something new to make. But he was not a product idea man, how in the world was he going to find the idea that would finally get him beyond cards?

As he toured the card making factory mindlessly, something incredible happened. He happened to see a maintenance guy playing with some toy while on duty. He collected the toy from him and he played with it for a bit. He knew at that point in time that he has found it, Eureka!

As you might have figured by now, that maintenance guy is called Gunpei Yokoi. And his amazing talents for making toys had quickly been put to work by Yamauchi. His first order was to turn his invention into the Ultra-hand, which would become an extraordinary successful toy. Over the span of more than a decade, Yokoi’s brilliant mind will bring forth an unprecedented number of innovative toys that would become staples of Japanese childhoods and turn Nintendo into a local toymaking giant. And even see them experimenting with electro-mechanical games for recreational parlors. But it all came crashing down abruptly.

In 1977, as he rides as a train back from a business trip, Yokoi’s thoughts linger on the delicate position of the company. He needs an idea for a hit product and he needs it soon. Japan was barely recovering from a catastrophic oil crisis that had wrecked the economy and nearly bankrupted Nintendo’s effort and basically and basically rebooted the entire global tech industry. It is in the same train ride when Yokoi notices an extremely bored businessman punching some random numbers on his pocket calculator to pass time. This is an often-repeated story for Nintendo games but there is a lot that has been misunderstood from that story.

From the extensive research done by Florent Gorges in his “history of Nintendo”, what Yokoi thought of was some sort of analog toy, nothing at all like the calculator the man was holding. So, he pitched the idea to his boss while on a journey to Sharp Corporations that they should make a calculator-sized toy for people in transit. Yamauchi did not comment on it.

Some weeks have passed when Yamauchi introduced Yokoi to someone, his friend from Sharp Corporations, to talk about his idea of making toys for businessmen using calculator components. Yokoi did not mention using calculator components but at that moment, he thought it could work. And just like that, the idea of portable electronic game came to be. With the calculator and tech company, Sharp as the main technological partner, in the project dubbed, “Micro Game”. And now the hard part, they had to find a way to make this idea into a real product. It had to be a timeless aesthetic, that would be fun to play attractive to all ages and be the size of a business card holder, so corporate men could play discreetly on it. And be achievable using the limitations of current calculator components. The last bit was not a small consideration, the calculator component they had access to was designed for an 8-digit calculator, with each digit utilizing each segment. Counting the dots and the minus sign, that means in total, it could drive 72 segments. If you use 4 numbers to track the score, that is only 44 segments to make an entire game. Not an easy feat. But from these limitations a jiggling game called “Ball” was born, with 3 planned variations accessible through buttons. Two problems arose though. The first was price. The device was on its way to a retail price of about 5,800 yen that is about $39.41 in 2024, which was higher than they would have desired for what is essentially a toy. The second is that as they might try, Yokoi could not conceive of an alternate game mode conceive of an alternate game mode for the third button. Eventually, he realized he could solve both problems with one solution. What if the third button turned the score counter into a clock? That way it was no longer a slightly overpriced game, but a highly affordable digital watch. The Micro Game had become: the “Game & Watch.”

Now the only thing standing in their way was getting their full greenlight from sharp. As Yokoi showed the prototype to the engineers at sharp, they were less than enthusiastic becoming the prototype had a number of engineering challenges that they will have to solve. The calculator technology that Yokoi wanted to use had become ancient and obsolete. But he insisted on them trying the prototype out. So, they did and they realized the gemstone they have been left with. The engineering experience combined with Yokoi’s ingenuity made it possible to solve every issue they had encountered. Including the tendency for the filters to generate the very annoying Newton Ring optical effect, which Yokoi reportedly solve by creating small indentations in the screen. Which he achieved using Nintendo’s card cutting machines, that led to the characteristics dot pattern that all Game & Watch devices have. The game was ready to start production. But as Yokoi presents his new product to Yamauchi, his reaction is disconcerting.

He was not pleased that Yokoi moved all the employees of Nintendo and Sharp to make one product. Yokoi asked if he should make two. Yamauchi told him to make 3 models instead as 2 as making products in even number is bad luck. And so, Game & Watch would release three games; Ball, Flag and Vermin. Optimistic, Nintendo set an estimate of 100,000 units sold in three years which would make it a very successful toy. And as it hits store shelves, Yokoi holds breath and waits. The first set of Game & Watch devices will sell 100,000 units in two months, with kids being the biggest fans. Which was a surprise, given the aim at businessman and the high price. As you can imagine, this would launch Yokoi into a design frenzy that will have him create so many models and series of Game & Watch devices that there are entire encyclopedias on it. More importantly, the enormous hit coincided with another small miracle: the creation of the “Donkey Kong” arcade game. That will be a smash hit in America. Together, these two products helped Nintendo pay its debts and replenish its coffers. Convincing Yamauchi to start an irreversible process that would finally turn Nintendo onto what it was destined to be; a video game company. And for a long while, the video game company.

However, the important bit; is that it was this very arcade hit that would inspire one of the most bizarre and influential stories of this time. While attempting to quench Yamauchi’s never-ending desire for more Game & Watch products, Yokoi set to design a Game & Watch adaptation of the hit arcade game. The problem was how to adapt the arcade joystick. Some of Yokoi’s attempt to solve the problem, such as a tiny joystick covered with rubber, would lead to undesired results. Apparently, employees at Nintendo would dub this one the: “Oppai Gata Kontorola, the boob-shaped controller.” So yeah, that was not going to work. So, he replaced with 4 buttons, one for each direction. But since Yokoi was concerned that there was no tactile way to feel which direction you were going to, he added a hard plastic cross. And he invented: the D-pad. Quite possibly the most influential input method for games ever. Eventually making it the standard for Nintendo consoles as well. Funnily enough, he had no idea for what he had just invented. To the point that when a Nintendo employee from the legal department asked him to sign the document to patent it, he said he was too busy and just to sign it himself. So, it is the name of that legal assistant, Ichiro Shirai, the one that would appear in the patent to this day instead of Yokoi’s. With hundreds and millions in products and sales, it is fair to say at the moment Yokoi did not have time to precisely ponder on that mistake. And while other rising products would start challenging his position as the top dog of Nintendo, it will be his attempt at a next generation Game & Watch that would send him on a path that would lead to his downfall.

But that is a story for another episode................