Gunpei Yokoi - Nintendo's first developer (1)

Nintendo has hundreds of developers today. But did you know that its development department was originally created for just one person - Gunpei Yokoi.

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Before Yokoi revealed his talent as a creator, the company was just like a mixture of a publishing company and a toy importer; they printed a few types of playing cards and sold some tabletop games imported from the US.

The company was founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi. It's main product was a traditional Japanese playing cards called Hanafuda, which was very popular then as a gambling tool.

Youtube: It Figures! - Nintendo brand Hanafuda playing cards

His products were renowned for their high quality and he had exclusive access to a nationwide distribution network, thanks to which the company created a virtual monopoly in the market.

It was his famous great-grandson, Hiroshi Yamauchi, who made the company a global player in digital toy industry. After becoming its third president, he concentrated his effort on creating another main product. Although they were selling ordinary playing cards (which is called "Trump" in the country) alongside Hanafuda, it hadn't gained the same popularity. So, he decided to make it more appealing for children by affiliating with the world's most famous animation studio, Disney.

The newly released version of playing cards instantly became a household name and the company more than doubled its sales in just a few years. Thanks to the big sales boost and its increasing profit, which was realized by automation of production processes of playing cards, the company went public in 1962.

It was a great honor for any Japanese corporate manager back then, but he had little time to enjoy the achievement because even though his company held the dominant position in playing cards market in Japan, he knew the market itself had been shrinking as those analog games had been losing their appeal to the young generations. Fortunately the company was not in a critical state yet, but he was under pressure to take actions before it's too late.

So, he sought to diversify into other business areas such as taxi business and food industry; they sold freeze-dried rice and Disney licensed rice seasonings (Furikake). But those businesses were not quite profitable.

What he needed then was a real game changer, who could take the company into uncharted territory.

Of course, the game changer was Yokoi; he transformed Nintendo from a moderate-sized domestic company into the dominant force in the global video game industry. But interestingly, Nintendo didn't hire him as a developer and the company wasn't Yokoi's first choice, either; it was just a coincidence that they found each other.

(continue to part 2)

Gunpei Yokoi - the grandfather of Mario, Link and Pikachu (2)

It was then that Satoshi Tajiri got a chance to meet the savior, Gunpei Yokoi. The veteran game producer of Nintendo had been thinking about making a game featuring Yoshi, a supporting character from Super Mario World.

Yokoi asked Tajiri if he could make a multi-platform game (for NES and GameBoy) within half a year. Although he didn't have much confidence, the young and desperate game designer had no choice but to say "Yes". After some discussion about its details, Yokoi decided to give the job to him.

It was a bit of a challenge for Tajiri and his team because they had never made a game following a strict schedule determined by other people. However, they could not afford to fail it. So, he decided to temporarily halt all other projects including Pokemon to concentrate all resources of the company on the newest project, which became the last hope for him.

Of course, they managed to complete the task before the due date and the finished product was released under the name "Yoshi No Tamago (Yoshi's Egg)" for NES and GameBoy in 1991.

Youtube : Yoshi - NES Gameplay

Despite the limited development time and small number of involved workers, the game became a big commercial success as it sold more than four million copies worldwide. He got the money he needed and earned trust from people in Nintendo, which helped him a lot when he resumed the development of Pokemon.

But at the same time he lost the most precious resource of his company - the workers. Although they did understand the company was doomed, they couldn't endure the pain of being forced to work hard for low wages. As a result, the company lost all three programmers at once.

Needless to say, no video game can be developed without a programmer. Besides, they were not only employees but also true friends of him; they had spent years together making and talking about games with the same passion. To overcome the extremely difficult situation - both mentally and practically - he had to transform himself from a "game freak" into a truly professional business manager.

He renewed his determination to complete the development of Pokemon and made use of every opportunity he had to stabilize the business. Fortunately, his company had achieved a good reputation as a reliable game developer thanks to their high quality products including Yoshi and "Magical Taluluto", which was released by SEGA. So he was able to secure new contracts with those two large publishers.

Youtube : Magical Taruruto Kun (released by SEGA in 1992)

Youtube: Pulseman (released by SEGA in 1994)

More notably, he expanded the size of the company by an M&A to deal with those increasing number of tasks, which was a highly unusual move for a Japanese company back then.

Although he had to put aside the most important project, Pokemon, for a while (probably between two and three years) due to the shortage of financial and human resources, it later turned out to be a beneficial investment. The core members of the original Pokemon team such as Junichi Masuda(composer) and Ken Sugimori(designer) polished their professional skills during those days while the company achieved solid financial stability, which enabled them to invest a large amount of time and money on the big project.

It was when they finished the development of "Mario & Wario", which was also produced by Yokoi, that he got the absolute confidence in the future of the company.

Youtube : Mario & Wario (released by Nintendo in 1993)

Satoshi Tajiri (2003 @ GameFreak)

When we released Mario & Wario, I was able to see a clear possibility for the first time that we could finish the development of Pokemon

- Continue (Vol.9, p.157) Ohta Publishing in Japanese


The rest of the story is well-known : his game Pokemon, which eventually took more than six years to make, became a legend. But he has never lost sincere appreciation for the person who supported him in the difficult days.



Satoshi Tajiri (2002 @ GameFreak)

I learned the professional way of making video games from Mr. Yokoi.

- Continue (Vol.7, p.134) Ohta Publishing in Japanese


Satoshi Tajiri (2016 @ GameFreak)

Mr. Yokoi was like a second father to me.

- Game no Kikakusho (Vol.1) from Denfami Nico Gamer in Japanese
http://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/projectbook/xevious/3

Gunpei Yokoi - the grandfather of Mario, Link and Pikachu (1)

Can you imagine a world where you will never meet Mario, Link and Pikachu? That's a truly horrible place. But without Gunpei Yokoi, you would have been stuck there.

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Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario and Zelda, learned essential elements of good video games when he made his first one under Yokoi's supervision. Since then, he has never lost his respect for the senior creator - even after he himself became the most respected game designer on earth. I'll tell you the story in a future article.

Shigeru Miyamoto (2000 @ Nintendo) :

He would play my games under development for hours without a break and make pointed remarks about what aspects need to be improved, in very short sentences.
Although it was tough to admit my lack of deep thought, I was impressed by his professional behavior and promised myself one day I will become a skilled game developer like him.

- Game Taikoku Nippon (ISBN:4413032063, p.106) Seishun Publishing in Japanese

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Satoshi Tajiri, the father of Pokemon, was in a desperate situation when he met Yokoi for the first time. Before then he was, as the name of his company indicates, a "Game Freak" who pursue his own interests.

It was not a wrong approach considering the fact he started his career as an indie game developer. He made his first game "Mendel Palace" with passion and love for video games.

Youtube: Quinty (Japanese version of Mendel Palace)

When it was released by Namco, he earned about half a million dollars and launched his own company. Although he was not so much interested in running a business, he thought it was a necessary step for him and his team to become professional game developers. But it later caused him growing pains.

After he became the president of Game Freak in 1989, he had been thinking for months about what kinds of games he should make. At that time, he had a notion that the industry lacked innovative products which provide entirely new experiences. After some research, he found a potential key to success inside Nintendo's newly released device : GameBoy.

Although the handheld game machine, which was developed by Yokoi, had a serial port for data exchange, there was no game which brought out the best of it. Certainly, many games supported the feature to implement multiplayer battles; the extraordinary success of Tetris would never have happened without it. But they were far from the innovative game experiences Tajiri was searching for.

One day, the basic idea of Pokemon, which was originally called "Capsule Monsters", suddenly occurred to him. He thought that if players could trade some valuable virtual items in the game, they would enjoy new social experiences no other game had ever provided. So, he wrote a proposal based on the idea and submitted it to Nintendo.

Youtube: Pokemon Beta | Capsule Monsters (a collection of original documents of Pokemon)

When the development process was to begin in 1990, he estimated it would not take more than a year to finish - which later proved to be a huge mistake - so, he signed a small contract with the publisher and received a moderate amount of money as the cost for development. But the actual development process was anything but smooth. About a year later, he found that he still had an enormous amount of work to do while his company was running out of money.

Actually, they had been developing three games in parallel to diversify the risk of failure, but unfortunately all of those projects were behind schedule. Facing a live-or-die situation for the company, he had been struggling to find a way to save it.

(continue to part 2)