The weather in Kyoto at the end of July is the hottest time of the year, but Gunpei Yokoi, who walks the streets, does not feel like summer at all, and his heart is even colder than winter in Kyoto.

It's only been half a month, but Yokoi Junhei has a feeling that the world has been turned upside down, and the rest of the company looks at him with a kind of "sinner" look at him, and he doesn't care, but even President Yamauchi doesn't have the trust he used to have, which makes him feel as if his world has collapsed.

Gunhei Yokoi still remembers the first time he met President Yamauchi, not long after he joined Nintendo, when he was just a maintenance worker on the playing card assembly line. Nintendo's modern assembly line equipment has not been introduced for a long time, so the equipment maintenance workers usually work very leisurely, so Yokoi Junhei started his amateur creation with a large pile of discarded equipment such as engraving machines stacked in the equipment maintenance room. Again, Gunhei Yokoi used the engraving machine to make a wooden hand, and then connected the spring, it became a device used to create a prank, he hid this device in the sleeve of his overalls, ran to the back of his colleague and unexpectedly pressed the telescopic switch, and the sudden outstretched hand startled many people, and the people next to him were amused by it.

Just when he was proud, an accident happened, perhaps because of a whim, the connection between the spring and the wooden hand was not too tight, and suddenly the wooden hand was bounced out, just hitting a middle-aged man who was hurrying by.

"It's good that I put a fist glove on my wooden hand, otherwise I ......" Yokoi Junhei secretly rejoiced, and was about to walk over and pick up his wooden hand, and apologize by the way.

Just took a step, Yokoi Junpei found that the previous laughter disappeared at once, and even the air became solemn, and when he saw clearly the person he hit with his wooden hand, his mood also became solemn, it turned out that the unlucky one was the boss of Nintendo, President Yamauchi, Yokoi Junhei felt that his head suddenly buzzed louder, and his steps couldn't help but slow down.

"Whose thing is this?" asked President Yamauchi, picking up the UFO that attacked him from the ground and looking at the people around him.

The colleagues were silent one by one, but the gaze that looked at Yokoi Gunpei betrayed him, and Yokoi Gunpei plucked up the courage to take two steps forward, came to President Yamauchi and said, "I'm sorry President, this is what I did." ”

After saying that, Yokoi Junhei was nervously preparing for the upcoming storm, but he didn't expect President Yamauchi to examine the wooden hand repeatedly, but instead asked calmly, "What is your name?"

Yokoi Junhei had heard his colleagues talk about President Yamauchi's iron-faced selfless past, he knew that he must have been in trouble this time, President Yamauchi asked him so calmly about his situation, eighty percent would not give him any way back, thinking of this Yokoi Junpei also let go, and said loudly: "President Yamauchi, my name is Yokoi Junhei, and I am the company's assembly line maintenance worker." ”

"Come to my office after work!" After dropping these words, President Yamauchi turned around and left with the "incriminating evidence" of Gunhei Yokoi.

After President Yamauchi left, the colleagues who were extremely quiet just now suddenly became lively, and they all guessed the president's intentions, some people thought that President Yamauchi was planning to scold Yokoi Gunpei in the office, and the scolding was not outside to maintain his demeanor, and some people thought that President Yamauchi wanted to beat Yokoi Gunpei, of course, this matter could not be carried out publicly, and some people were even pessimistic that President Yamauchi was ready to fire Yokoi Gunpei. Although each has its own opinions, one thing is the same, everyone thinks that Yokoi Junhei is in big trouble this time, and he dares to violently attack the leader of the company, which is definitely a big crime to drag out and one size fits all.

was told by his colleagues like this, and Yokoi Junhei's heart was also messed up, and he sat quietly alone all afternoon, always feeling uneasy. Finally staying up until the bell rang for work, Yokoi Junhei walked into the president's office nervously, ready to meet the judgment of his fate.

The expected roar didn't happen, and neither did the speculative Iron Fist of revenge. President Yamauchi straightened his black-rimmed glasses and said with a smile, "Your invention is very interesting, but I personally hope that your invention will not be limited to personal entertainment, but will make it a 'great' commodity that can be accepted by the public!"

Yokoi Junhei was stunned for a moment, President Yamauchi obviously didn't want to hold him accountable when he said this, and even hoped that he would study further, which was too far from the guesses and expectations of his previous colleagues, and he didn't know what to say all of a sudden.

"Take this back. President Yamauchi pushed the wooden hand that had caused the accident from the table to Gunhei Yokoi.

Yokoi Junhei picked up the wooden hand, his heart was excited, he held it for a long time, he didn't say a word, and finally bowed deeply to President Yamauchi, he turned around and left, his heart was already full of surging power.

In the days that followed, Yokoi worked tirelessly to improve the device that was originally used for pranks, adjusting the materials used to make it lighter and softer, and modifying the design of the device to make it more reasonable and safe, so that there would never be a farce like the Flying Flyer again.

A few days later, Yokoi came to the president's office again with the redesigned device, and President Yamauchi took the device and fiddled with it almost fifty times in succession, as if he was like an excited child, and as Yokoi Gunpei expected, after such a toss, the whole device was still intact and there were no embarrassing mechanical failures.

"This thing is interesting, does it have a name?" asked President Yamauchi, putting down the device in his hand.

"This thing is in the shape of a hand, and I want to call it a 'super strange hand', but I wonder if you have any opinions, president?" replied to Yokoi modestly.

"I'm going to have Imashi join you in forming a new product development department and continue to develop interesting devices like 'Super Weird Hands', would you like to?"

"I do!" Gunpei Yokoi bowed deeply again, his heart filled with the joy of being appreciated. That kind of happiness, Yokoi Junhei still remembers very clearly, but unfortunately he can't find it anymore recently.

Through the vigorous promotion of TV commercials, the "Super Monster" was a huge hit during the year-end and New Year business war, selling more than 1.4 million units in less than half a year, becoming Nintendo's most successful product of the year. Since then, the new product development department has been officially named Nintendo's first development department, and Yokoi Gunpei has also replaced Hiroshi Imanishi as the head of the first development department, leading a group of young people to specialize in the research and development of new products, and that period can be said to be Yokoi's happiest days at Nintendo.

During a ride on the Shinkansen, Gunpei Yokoi was influenced by a young man who was fiddling with a liquid crystal electronic calculator in his hand, and the idea of designing a portable game console was born with the support of President Yamauchi, who was almost overwhelming, and the world's first portable game console, Game&Watch, was born in the hands of Gunpei Yokoi. The first game "Ball" received a cumulative sales of 3 million units in just 8 months, and by the time the fourth game "Donkey Kong" came out, with a very unique symmetrical dual-screen design, the Game&Watch with the built-in "Donkey Kong" game once again set a new sales record, and also attracted many pretenders. The Go series had the most impact, and even sparked a lawsuit between the two companies.

Influenced by the success of Atari, President Yamauchi germinated the idea of entering the home game console market, although this time it was not Yokoi Junhei himself who took on the heavy responsibility, but Masayuki Uemura, who was in charge of research and development, was dug by him from Sharp, and in the process of research and development, he also contributed to the "cross key" used on the gamepad, and the final product was the Nintendo red and white machine (FC) that has been popular for nearly ten years.

The success of the development of the GameBoy can be said to be the most glorious page in Yokoi's life, although he was criticized when he showed the first machine to President Yamauchi, who was very dissatisfied with the dim and blurry picture of the first machine and the serious afterimage, and asserted: "Such a thing will definitely fail", but President Yamauchi was still very supportive of his idea of improvement, so there was the later portable game console GameBoy. Not long after, companies such as NEC, Atari and Sega also launched their portable game consoles, and they all used the latest color LCD screens, and the performance of the game was much better than that of the GameBoy, and many people in Nintendo were just like when they developed the Game&Watch, and they accused Yokoi Junhei of being "short-sighted and not knowing how to adopt new technologies", and this time it was President Yamauchi's support that helped him get through this difficult time, and the GameBoy also achieved incredible success.

In 1991, an American company developed the latest technology to use high-brightness LEDs to form three-dimensional images, and a research institute affiliated with Keio University in Japan wanted to put this technology into practical use. As always, there were many people who opposed it, but President Yamauchi still trusted Yokoi as much as ever, and the VRBoy plan was finally approved.

But then everything was different, with the fiasco of VRBoy's release, Yokoi Junhei found that he had betrayed his relatives, except for the dozens of people in the first development department, the entire Nintendo guilt could no longer find a person willing to support him, and even many of the previous relationships were quite good, and even Miyamoto Shigeru, who had always been called his disciple, stood on his side. One of the main reasons why Yokoi doesn't know this is because he is outspoken, and in an exclusive interview with the Nihon Kogyo Shimbun earlier this year, he frankly stated: "Nintendo's development route in the past is short, small, light, and thin, and President Yamauchi repeatedly emphasized this to us in the 70s, but recently Nintendo's development direction has begun to deviate, and I myself have doubts about the need to emphasize the high performance of 64-bit consoles...... This statement caused an uproar within Nintendo, and offended the active advocates of the 64 console plan, such as Minoru Arakawa, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Genhiro Takeda, and since then, President Yamauchi is basically the only one left in the entire company who is still supporting Yokoi Gunpei and his first development department.

If VRBoy can achieve the expected success, then Yokoi Gunpei may once again reject the Yakitsu Tailai, but when President Yamauchi also loses his previous tolerance and demands that VRBoy must be listed as soon as possible, even if Yokoi Gunpei has more ideas, he can only put the almost half-finished VRBoy on the sales counter, and the result can be imagined.

Turning a corner, you can already clearly see the Nintendo headquarters building not far away, and Yokoi Junhei looked at both sides, preparing to cross the intersection.

"Yokoi-kun, long time no see!" a somewhat familiar voice came from behind him.

Yokoi Junhei turned around and saw that it was his old colleague Masayuki Uemura, who resigned gloomily because of the breakdown of the project with Sony, but now he looks pretty good, and it looks like he should have lived well all these years. The two met when they were still in Sharp, and Masayuki Uemura was able to come to Nintendo, which also has the credit of Yokoi Junpei, the two can be regarded as old acquaintances, and Yokoi Junpei is still very happy to see Masayuki Uemura again after many years.

"Kamimura-kun, look at your complexion, you've been doing well all these years, where are you now. ”

"Yokojin-kun, since I left Nintendo, I went to a company in Hong Kong to do research on home game console hardware. Masayuki Uemura explained briefly.

"Hong Kong companies, I don't seem to have heard of any companies engaged in research in this area, but there are no results yet?" asked Yokoi Gunpei, puzzled.

Masayuki Uemura smiled, took out a leaflet from his bag, handed it over, and said, "It's already fruitful." ”

General Yokoi Gunhei believed that the results of the propaganda were only skeptical, and it was actually Sony's PS game console, and he asked in surprise: "PS game console? What does this have to do with the Hong Kong company you mentioned?"

"The PS game console was jointly developed by our company and Sony. Masayuki Uemura said with great ambition.

"Congratulations to Uemura-kun for getting what he wanted, I didn't expect to go around and around, but your second development department and Sony's project was still successful. Yokoi Junhei congratulated, but his tone was a little sour, perhaps remembering his failed VRBoy.

"Yokoi-kun, I don't know if you have time to talk?"

"Well, Uemura-kun, let's talk about it when I get off work. ”

"Well, how about going to the tavern we used to frequent?"

"Okay, Uemura-kun, see you after work. ”

"Yokoi-kun, goodbye. ”

Bidding farewell to Masayuki Uemura, Gunpei Yokoi crossed the road into Nintendo's headquarters with his briefcase in his hand. In the elevators and in the aisles, Gunhei Yokoi could always hear some people gathering together and whispering, and although he couldn't hear what they were saying, he could guess that it wasn't a good thing.

Walking into the somewhat empty First Development Department, Yokoi Junhei was about to put down his briefcase, when Sakashita Masashi came over and said: "Yokojin-kun, the new announcement just this morning, because the N64 project is understaffed, so we have to withdraw a group of personnel to supplement Miyamoto Shigeru's intelligence development headquarters, and our first development department will transfer twenty people out this time." ”

"Twenty!" Yokoi Junhei angrily threw his briefcase on his desk, and was about to roar to vent the frustration in his heart, but somehow, he suddenly became quiet again, and asked, "Sakashita-kun, is there anything else?"

Seeing that Yokoi Junhei's face suddenly turned from anger to calm, Sakashita Masashi was startled, and a trace of uneasiness welled up in his heart, but the habit he had developed over the years still made him instinctively answer: "Yokoi-kun, there is nothing else." You ......"

"It's okay, I'm fine. Sensing Sakashita's uneasiness, Gunhei Yokoi explained a little, and then continued, "Let's continue with the improvement of the GameBoy. ”

"Alas, well. Masashi Sakashita sighed and turned to the workbench next to him.

Now that the GameBoy is in its infancy, people seem to have forgotten about the GameBoy as a gadget that once brought endless fun to everyone, lured by the final madness of the SFC (Super Nintendo) and the beautiful graphics of next-gen consoles. In the eyes of others in Nintendo, if GameBoy wants to revive the river, it must make very big improvements in performance and display, otherwise it will not be able to compete with the beautiful picture on the next generation of game consoles, but Yokoi Junhei does not see it that way, he thinks that the potential of GameBoy is still great, there is still a lot of room for excavation, and now the application of color LCD is not yet ripe, so the best solution is to start from portability, We will make efforts in three aspects: power saving and weight reduction, and maximize the advantages of the GameBoy. Unfortunately, even President Yamauchi didn't seem to be optimistic about it this time, and as a result, the First Development Department was not only unable to maintain its original strength, but even had to transfer personnel from the First Development Department for Nintendo's N64 plan, and Yokoi Gunpei didn't know when his idea would be realized.

Taking a deep breath, Gunpei Yokoi tried to calm his emotions, then went to his desk and sat down, picked up a disassembled GameBoy on the table, and studied the layout of the PCB on the circuit board, thinking about where he could be further streamlined.

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