Gunpei Yokoi was the creator of the famous Game and Watch and Game Boy toys of Nintendo. He worked at Nintendo in 1965 in the maintenance department after obtaining a degree in Electronics from Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan.

Yokoi’s skill in the creation of toys was discovered in 1970 when Hiroshi Yamauchi, then president of Nintendo, saw a toy with an extending arm that Yokoi created for his own amusement during his spare time. Yamauchi ordered him to develop and make more of it in time for Christmas. It became an instant success, selling roughly 1.2 million units.

This paved the way for Yokoi to be transferred to Nintendo’s product development where he created toys, including:

• the Ten Billion Barrel puzzle,
• the Chiritory,
• the Ultra Machine,
• a “Love Tester,”
• Nintendo Beam Gun Games, and
• the Game and Watch series of handhelds, which had titles like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros., Ball, Fire, Flagman, and Oil Panic.

Gunpei Yokoi later developed Nintendo’s most profitable product, the Game Boy.

Game Boy came out in 1989 and sold over 50 million units. Titles of games for the Game Boy included the Super Mario Land series, Metroid II: Return of Samus, and the puzzle game Dr. Mario.

His next creation, the Virtual Boy, a home console that presented games in red and black, did not do well in Japan and North America. He resigned from Nintendo on August 15, 1996; only days after the Game Boy Pocket came out.

Gunpei Yokoi then founded the company Koto Laboratory in Kyoto where he began developing the WonderSwan, a handheld toy developed in partnership between Koto and Bandai. However, he did not see its final product in 1999 for he died in 1997 due to a car accident.