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TVTranscript
00:01It started with a man.
00:03Gunpei Yokoi turns out to be the Jonathan Swift slash Cervantes slash William Shakespeare of video games.
00:10Who wanted to take gaming on the go.
00:15It was Yokoi's team that looked at miniaturization.
00:19Everything the NES does, we can do in this little handheld unit.
00:23He met with his share of disappointment.
00:26It's a cool invention, great thought, probably not a good idea at the end of the day.
00:29Gunpei Yokoi was in the doghouse at this point.
00:31His system had bombed.
00:33And created something that exceeded everyone's expectations.
00:37The GBA is definitely the most successful console in the history of mankind.
00:42This is the story behind the best-selling game system ever created.
00:45And the man behind it.
00:47It's the story of Nintendo Game Boy.
00:50Game Boy doesn't just lead the handheld gaming market.
00:53It owns it.
01:16The year is 1965, and a successful entrepreneur named Hiroshi Yamauchi is at the head of a playing card manufacturer
01:24named Nintendo.
01:26At the time, Nintendo was completely and totally run by Mr. Yamauchi.
01:31He made all the decisions, and any decision made by anyone else was always run by him for approval or
01:36for his own take on it.
01:38He's a very stern businessman.
01:41Very shrewd.
01:42Very smart.
01:42I would say he's, you know, he is a genius, but a tough businessman.
01:47Yamauchi-san is a hard ass.
01:48I think that's the best way to describe his style of management.
01:51He was one of the early pioneers at Nintendo.
01:53That man demanded a lot from his troop and from his team.
01:57At the time, he was 100% in control of every detail.
02:01And so everything had to go through him.
02:03And a young technician from Kyoto comes on board to maintain Nintendo's factory machinery.
02:10Their plant technician, the guy who made sure that the assembly belt was working properly and that the plant equipment
02:16was working properly, was this guy named Gunpei Yokoi.
02:19Quiet guy, unassuming guy, very smart guy, very loyal, dedicated guy, who at night liked to go home and experiment
02:27with making toys.
02:29It's not long before Gunpei's experimenting gets him noticed.
02:32Yamauchi came to him and said, do you think you could make a toy for us to sell?
02:38Now in America, we'd say, sure, what's in it for me?
02:40That didn't occur to Gunpei Yokoi.
02:42He said, sure.
02:42And he came back with some of the inventions he'd made.
02:45His first invention was like this mechanical arm that like was basically just would grab things.
02:50And that was one of the early things that he developed for Nintendo and it sold pretty well.
02:53The toy called the Ultra Hand is released in 1970 and sells over a million units that holiday season.
03:00Toys didn't have to be brilliant back then.
03:02They just had to be simple and fun and easy to manufacture.
03:05And this was in the pre-Japan taking over the world period.
03:09So there wasn't a lot of money.
03:11Cheap was good.
03:12Yokoi's toys worked well.
03:13They sold well.
03:14But Yamauchi saw that there was something special about Yokoi.
03:18That he had a great creativity.
03:20You know, the other thing that's really remarkable about Yokoi, he was very charismatic.
03:26Gunpei Yokoi turns out to be the Jonathan Swift slash Cervantes slash William Shakespeare of video games.
03:33On August 28, 1980, Nintendo releases another of Gunpei Yokoi's inventions, the Game & Watch.
03:42So in the beginning, he came up with the Game & Watch unit and made himself a name at Nintendo.
03:47And he kind of expanded that product as the years passed.
03:50You know, he added a two screen Game & Watch unit.
03:52It was very popular.
03:55This was the period where Mattel and Coleco were battling with light diode football games and racing games.
04:01And here using LCD screens, they added a little more image to them.
04:06Nintendo wasn't the only company doing these at the time.
04:09A number of companies did.
04:10Time out electronic games from Mego.
04:13All tell time and are so slim, you'll play them anywhere.
04:17The Nintendo units were usually a little more expensive.
04:21But they were usually a little better made and they were a little more creative.
04:24With classics such as Manhole and Donkey Kong,
04:28the Game & Watch line continues for nearly 10 years, selling more than 40 million units.
04:34Yokoi becomes a star player at Nintendo.
04:38My understanding was that Gunpei Yokoi really had Yamauchi's ear.
04:43That when Yokoi suggested something, you know, the engineers were always behind him.
04:47He delivered on what he said he could do always.
04:50Always, always, always.
04:51When he said he could make something, he made it.
04:53And he made it cheaply.
04:55And that was enough for Yamauchi.
04:58In 1983, Nintendo releases a video game console called the Famicom in Japan.
05:04It comes to the US in 1985 as the Nintendo Entertainment System.
05:08The new console is a hit in both countries and will go on to sell 50 million units in its
05:16lifetime.
05:17Gunpei Yokoi turns his focus to bringing the power of the NES to the palm of your hand.
05:24Gunpei Yokoi came up with the idea for Game Boy.
05:26As far as the development goes, this was done out of his team.
05:30Stop!
05:31Gunpei Yokoi's R&D 1 team, which is also responsible for the NES classic Metroid, gets to work.
05:40The inspiration for Game Boy definitely was Game & Watch territory.
05:44It was basically taking console gaming and merging it with the whole Game & Watch handheld craze.
05:49What Yokoi doesn't realize is that their little NES has a big future.
06:03In 1989, Gunpei Yokoi is finishing up work on a special project.
06:07The motivation to create Game Boy was that the NES or the Famicom was a world power.
06:14Nintendo owned between 93 and 97% of the world console market by 1989.
06:20And the world console market was huge.
06:22It was huge.
06:25So they said, well, look, here's a chance for us to go from just this little piece of business to
06:31a much bigger piece of business.
06:33Portable Game Boy is launched with an initial selling price of $169.99.
06:39Game Boy had a worldwide launch. Game Boys almost always have had worldwide launches.
06:43The launch of Game Boy was tremendous.
06:45The world was in love with Nintendo.
06:47The United States was in love with Nintendo.
06:49It was an immediate hit.
06:50It came out.
06:51People bought it.
06:52It immediately expanded their business.
06:55And the Game Boy has an unstoppable ally.
06:58A game called Tetris.
07:00The initial success of the Game Boy was due to Tetris.
07:03A fantastic game and a brilliant business decision for Nintendo to bundle it.
07:08Tetris was very, very instrumental to the success of the Game Boy, simply because it was on the Game Boy
07:13at the right time.
07:14I wouldn't say that the Game Boy wouldn't be what it is today had it not been for Tetris, but
07:18it certainly helped really jumpstart and accelerate the Game Boy audience growth.
07:26They had Tetris.
07:27You can't underestimate that as sort of a factor in the original Game Boy's success.
07:31Nintendo also has a stable of NES games that are perfect for the Game Boy.
07:36When Game Boy launched, Nintendo went back to the well a little bit.
07:40NES had come out in America in 1985.
07:4386 was when it went coast to coast.
07:46And it had NES baseball.
07:49It had NES tennis.
07:51There was a golf game.
07:54Nintendo went back to a lot of these very easy games and ported them over to Game Boy.
07:58But the launch titles looked an awful lot like launch titles for the NES.
08:04But it doesn't take long for competition to appear.
08:08Atari came out with Lynx at the same time that Game Boy came out.
08:12And they had to be thanking their lucky stars over at Atari.
08:16Because, you know, here comes Game Boy, little tiny screen, black and white, very low resolution.
08:22I like Lynx. The screen is bigger.
08:24They said, you know, they'd gotten to go see a demonstration of Game Boy.
08:27I like Game Boy.
08:28And they laughed and laughed and laughed till they cried because the thing was so pathetic.
08:33What they didn't realize and what Nintendo has always focused on was if you're going to play a portable game,
08:40people are thinking cheap.
08:42They're thinking convenient.
08:43One of the key advantages of the Game Boy was that it was low cost and that it didn't have
08:48any moving parts in it.
08:49So there wasn't a disk drive or anything. It was all cartridge based and it didn't have a light in
08:52it.
08:53So you could play Game Boy games for a very long time.
08:55And that's very important for the target group of the Game Boy.
08:57It was kids.
08:58You could take out a Lynx and play for two hours maybe.
09:01And you would have to either carry some spare batteries or run back home and get some.
09:05And for going on trips or being on a long bus ride and a train ride, it just wasn't feasible.
09:10Although the Lynx was technically a more powerful system, it quickly finds itself in bargain bins.
09:17While Game Boy sales continue to climb.
09:19In 1991, Sega and NEC also enter the handheld market.
09:24Game Gear was similar in that it had a really cool screen.
09:27You could even watch TV on it. It just looked great.
09:29But in order for the screen to be that great, it had to be powered by a lot of battery
09:33power.
09:33And that meant that the batteries didn't last very long.
09:36And then at the same time, NEC came out with its Turbo Express.
09:40Again, a better screen, color screen, backlit screen.
09:43But it's playing actual console games.
09:45But the problem is both of these units cost more than Game Boy.
09:48Even though the NEC Turbo Express played console games, the library was nowhere near the size of the Game Boy
09:56library.
09:57And you gotta harp on the battery life again.
09:59Thanks to longer battery life, a larger selection of great games, and a cheaper price point,
10:05the Game Boy comes out on top, selling 32 million units by 1992.
10:11Meanwhile, the Lynx, Game Gear, and Turbo Express become things of the past.
10:16But how much longer will the relatively simple Game Boy be able to stay on top?
10:30Nearly five years after its 1989 launch, and more than 50 million units later,
10:35the Game Boy gets the first of many upgrades, the Super Game Boy.
10:391994, the first jump for Game Boy was the Super Game Boy.
10:44Super Game Boy was a peripheral that you could put in your Super NES that would let you play Game
10:49Boy games in a Super NES.
10:50Now, if you can think of anything that would be dumber, instead of playing these big, beautiful, full-color, highly
10:55-detailed Super NES games,
10:57you could now play these $19 Game Boy games on your Super NES.
11:01It did not make a lot of sense.
11:02At the same time, Sega came out with 32X.
11:07It gave you more color, it gave you better sound, it gave you bigger games.
11:11That made sense. It made a lot of sense, right?
11:14So what happens?
11:16Sega sold 300,000 32Xs.
11:19Super Game Boy sales were in the millions, multiple millions.
11:22Who could figure out why?
11:23But people wanted to play their Game Boy games on the big TV, jagged as they looked.
11:28It was pretty stupid stuff, but people bought it.
11:31They snatched it up.
11:33It brought some new life to the Game Boy.
11:35In 1995, color finally comes to the little handheld that could, but not in the form of a color screen.
11:42Another thing that brought new life was not Game Boy Color, but Color Game Boy.
11:47Game Boy came out in 1989.
11:49For a while, it was really hot, and then it became a backwater for a while.
11:52So it came out first with Color Game Boy.
11:54And I still remember Peter May, the vice president of Nintendo, standing up at CES and saying,
12:00you know, you people are always asking, when are we going to come out with a Color Game Boy?
12:03Well, here it is.
12:05What color Game Boy was, was Game Boys with colored outsides.
12:09You know, ha, ha, ha, funny joke there, Peter.
12:12Weird as it sounds, people liked it.
12:15It brought Game Boy sales up.
12:17Go figure.
12:18Just a different color outside Game Boy.
12:20The next step for the Game Boy was to become smaller.
12:24Six years after the original Game Boy came out, Nintendo released the Game Boy Pocket.
12:28What it was, was kind of a tweaked version of the original system.
12:31Even though, you know, you might not immediately notice the contrast of the screen.
12:35The screen itself went just much better.
12:37You could see much more.
12:38The screen didn't blur as easily when you moved.
12:40So with this pocket upgrade, you get a much smaller unit.
12:43A unit that used smaller batteries.
12:46Something that you could put in your pocket and really bring along with you.
12:50It looks like Nintendo just can't lose.
12:52But that changes in 1995, when the father of Game Boy, Gunpei Yokoi, releases what will become Nintendo's biggest flop.
13:01The Virtual Boy.
13:04He was interested in the experiment about, could you make games 3D?
13:09Could you actually make it so that instead of feeling like you were looking at an image, you were looking
13:15at an object.
13:16And that was kind of the impetus.
13:18The whole Virtual Boy debacle was a very interesting one, especially because I was privy to more information than many
13:25people.
13:25The Virtual Boy had very few redeeming features.
13:27It wasn't proper 3D.
13:29It was only in red.
13:30It was attached to a tabletop and wasn't moveable.
13:34It wasn't portable or lightweight or anything.
13:35There was just nothing redeeming about it.
13:38And the ultimate frustration for me was that they had a much better system in development that got cancelled.
13:44That might have been successful.
13:45You never know.
13:46But the Virtual Boy certainly had no chance of success with all its unusual decisions that they had taken.
13:52It didn't really sell that well.
13:54People didn't really like it.
13:55It gave people a lot of headaches because you'd look into it and it was red.
13:58It was flickery.
13:59And if you played it for too long, I think your eyes might melt.
14:02Because you were staring at red and black and only red and black for a long time, people tended to
14:07get dizzy.
14:09If you played it for like more than an hour, when you looked away, you couldn't see red anymore.
14:14It's a cool invention.
14:15Great thought.
14:16Probably not a good idea at the end of the day.
14:18Because of the Virtual Boy's abysmal performance, Yokoi is left behind in favor of other designers.
14:25Kunpei Yokoi was in the doghouse at this point.
14:28His system had bombed.
14:29In corporate Japan, there's something called a window seat.
14:32And a window seat basically is you screwed up, you did something wrong, and instead of firing you or reprimanding
14:38you every day or giving you another chance,
14:42they basically let you sit by the window and occupy you with something, but not really let you make decisions
14:48that affect the company.
14:49And that's exactly what happened to Yokoi.
14:51He got a window seat.
14:52So it was a pretty tough time.
14:54You have Yokoi, and they're leaving him with this disaster.
14:58They're saying, you are going to man this disaster, and you will be ignored.
15:02No one's going to come talk to you.
15:04You're going to be associated with this joke of a system.
15:08While everyone else is going to look at our big N64, the system of the future.
15:13Gunpei's first big failure has him down, but his sights are set on starting something new.
15:30By 1996, Nintendo has grown bigger than ever.
15:33And with that growth comes a change in focus to bigger projects, such as the Nintendo 64.
15:38This powerful new system overshadows the failed Virtual Boy.
15:44In August of that year, Gunpei Yokoi decides to leave the Japanese gaming giant and start his own company.
15:50He was sitting there working on stuff that had no consequence.
15:54Stuff that wouldn't make Nintendo a lot of money, wouldn't exactly change the world.
15:58So Yokoi got bored and in the end left the company.
16:02It wasn't too much longer that he started Koto.
16:06While he was at Koto, he did what he always did.
16:09He created a new game system.
16:11The wonder swan.
16:14Tragically, on October 4th, 1997, Gunpei Yokoi is struck and killed by a car in Japan.
16:23His death is felt throughout the industry.
16:26He was also a father and a husband and very much in love with his children.
16:31The name Gunpei Yokoi was synonymous with handheld gaming.
16:36And for this person to get killed in a car accident, die such a meaningless death, I think the industry
16:44was just shaken up completely.
16:48Yokoi's legacy lives on in his creations.
16:51And Nintendo continues to build on his greatest invention.
16:54Nintendo had been working on color Game Boys for many, many years before the color Game Boy actually came out.
17:00They had a policy, quite rightly, that they wouldn't release a color system until they could have almost as good
17:05battery life as their black and white system.
17:07But color isn't the only innovation for the Game Boy.
17:13I think that one of the other things that has contributed to the success of the Game Boy has been
17:18matching great software titles with the different platforms.
17:22I mean, with Game Boy Color, that came out and we were able to launch that essentially with the Pokémon
17:27games.
17:30Pokémon was a phenomenal success and an amazing game, perfect for the Game Boy.
17:35Pokémon.
17:35They're great games and I think they really helped draw audiences in and convince them to buy the hardware.
17:41The success of Pokémon puts a Game Boy in the hands of nearly every kid in America.
17:46But Nintendo is already thinking about the next step.
17:49Nintendo actually had, it was called Project Atlantis.
17:52That was the original code name for the Game Boy Advance.
17:56It was actually ready a lot longer before they released it, but they didn't want to release it because the
18:01Game Boy Color was selling so well.
18:03By June 11, 2001, Nintendo is finally ready to release the next generation Game Boy to the masses.
18:11It only takes four days for the new system to sell more than half a million units at just $99
18:16a piece.
18:17Game Boy Advance.
18:18Pretty much anyone can buy the Game Boy Advance and we've really tried to take the technological capabilities of Game
18:24Boy and improve upon them while keeping them within reach of the average consumer.
18:30The Game Boy family has a new addition, a new screen-lighted flip design model we're calling Game Boy Advance
18:36SP.
18:37On March 23, 2003, Nintendo releases a redesigned Game Boy Advance.
18:42In just one year, 6.5 million units of the new handheld are sold.
18:47The Game Boy Advance SP, of course, is the culmination of 14 years of great Game Boy fun.
18:51It's front-lighted, it's got a rechargeable battery, it's got everything game players have been asking for.
18:57In 2003, Gunpei Yokoi's accomplishments are honored at the Game Developers Choice Awards.
19:03For lifetime achievement.
19:11If my father were able to attend the ceremony, the joy that I could feel as a son would have
19:16been something no words that mine could ever express.
19:19To him, and thank my father in heaven, to whom I have an ever-increasing feeling of love and respect.
19:28Nintendo continues to push the envelope of portable game design with the DS.
19:33This is not a replacement for Game Boy.
19:35For Nintendo, DS is an interesting experiment.
19:38The future for Game Boy is that Game Boy is going to get smaller and cheaper.
19:43In the past, there have been other handheld systems that have better technology,
19:47but for one reason or another, GBA just has plowed through them all and totally dominated.
19:53Today, the Game Boy series of handheld systems have sold more than 160 million units worldwide.
19:59Other companies are trying to challenge its dominance, like Sony's PSP.
20:05But there's no denying that Nintendo's handheld is the most successful portable game system in history.
20:12Nine serious competitors have made a run at Game Boy in the past 15 years, but nine have failed.
20:17Game Boy doesn't just lead the handheld gaming market, it owns it.
20:26It all started with Easter eggs. Before you know it, I couldn't get enough of God mode.
20:31When I don't punch them in, I get a little weak.
20:33I thought you were supposed to go backwards in Pip-Fall.
20:35I can't even make it through two levels without infinite ammo.
20:38I can't remember a time when I didn't use codes.
20:40They made up the codes, I just used them.
20:41Someone's gonna find out.
20:44Get the latest cheat codes and walk-through strategies for Grand Theft Auto San Andreas.
20:49Write the home in the tube you got with a kid!
20:52Cheat season premiere tomorrow night at 10 Eastern, 7 Pacific.
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