game trailblazer

Chapter 175 The Besieged Yokoi

The weather in Kyoto at the end of July is the hottest period of the year, but Junpei Yokoi, who is walking on the street, does not feel summer at all. His heart is colder than winter in Kyoto at this time.

It was only half a month, but Yokoi Junpei had a feeling that the world was turned upside down. Others in the company looked at him as a "sinner". Trust, which made him feel as if his world had collapsed.

Junpei Yokoi still remembers the first time he met President Yamauchi, it was not long after he joined Nintendo, when he was just a maintenance worker of a poker assembly line.Nintendo's modern assembly line equipment has not been introduced for a long time, so equipment maintenance workers usually have a very leisurely job. Junpei Yokoi, who can't be idle, used a lot of discarded equipment such as engraving machines piled up in the equipment maintenance room to start an amateur creation.Once again, Junhei Yokoi used a carving machine to make a wooden hand, and then connected it with a spring to become a device for making pranks. He hid the device in the sleeve of his overalls playfully and ran to The colleague unexpectedly pressed the retractable switch behind his back, and the sudden outstretched hand shocked many people, and the people next to him were also amused by it.

Just when I was proud, an accident happened, maybe because of a whim, the connection between the spring and the wooden hand was not too tight, and suddenly the wooden hand was ejected, just hitting a passing middle young people.

"Fortunately, I put a glove on the wooden hand, otherwise..." Yokoi Junpei congratulated himself, and was about to walk over to retrieve his wooden hand, and apologize by the way.

Taking a step just now, Yokoi Junhei found that the laughter and laughter before disappeared, and even the air became solemn. When he saw clearly the person he hit with his wooden hand, his mood also became serious. It turned out that the unlucky one was the boss of Nintendo, President Yamauchi. Junpei Yokoi felt his head suddenly grow louder, and he couldn't help slowing down his steps.

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

The colleagues were all silent, but the eyes they looked at Yokoi Junpei betrayed him. Yokoi Gunpei mustered up the courage to take two steps forward, came to President Yamauchi and said, "I'm sorry, President, this is my job. s things."

After talking about Junpei Yokoi nervously preparing for the coming storm, he did not expect President Yamauchi to examine the wooden hand repeatedly, and instead of getting angry, he asked calmly, "What's your name? What position do you hold?" ?”

Junpei Yokoi had heard from his colleagues about President Yamauchi's stern and selfless past, and he knew that he must have caused trouble this time. President Yamauchi asked him about his situation so calmly, and probably would not give him any way out. Thinking of this Yokoi Gunpei also went all out, and said loudly: "President Yamauchi, my name is Yokoi Gunpei, and I am the company's assembly line maintenance worker."

"Come to my office after get off work!" After leaving this sentence, President Yamauchi turned around and left with Gunpei Yokoi's "evidence".

After President Yamauchi left, the colleagues who had been extremely quiet just now suddenly became lively, and they all speculated about the president's intentions. Some people thought that President Yamauchi planned to scold Yokoi Gunpei in the office, and the reason why he didn't scold him outside was to Keep your manners. Some people think that President Yamauchi wants to beat Gunpei Yokoi. Of course, this matter cannot be done publicly. Some even pessimistically think that President Yamauchi is planning to fire Gunpei Yokoi.Although each has their own opinions, there is one thing that is consistent. Everyone thinks that Yokoi Gunpei is in serious trouble this time. He dared to violently attack the company leader.

Being told such nonsense by his colleagues, Junpei Yokoi's heart was also disturbed, and he sat quietly all afternoon, feeling uneasy all the time.After finally surviving until the bell rang, Yokoi Gunpei walked into the president's office anxiously, preparing to face the trial of his own fate.

The expected roar did not happen, and the guessed revenge iron fist also did not appear.President Yamauchi adjusted 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 can make it a kind of entertainment for people. 'Great' commodity accepted by the masses!"

Junpei Yokoi 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 do further research. This was far from the guesses and expectations of his colleagues before, and he didn't know it all at once. What to say.

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

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

In the days that followed, Junpei Yokoi vigorously improved the device that was originally used for pranks, adjusted the material used in the device to make it lighter and softer, and modified the structural design of the device to make it more It is reasonable and safe, and there will be no more farces such as flying out of space.

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

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

"This thing is in the shape of a hand. I want to call it a 'super weird hand'. Do you have any opinion, President?" Junpei Yokoi replied modestly.

"I'm going to ask Imanishi to form a new product development department with you, and continue to develop interesting devices like 'Super Monster Hand'. Would you like to?"

"I am willing!" Junpei Yokoi bowed deeply again, filled with the joy of being appreciated.Junpei Yokoi still remembers that kind of happiness very clearly until now, but it is a pity that he can no longer find it gradually.

Vigorously promoted by TV commercials, "Super Monster" was very popular at the end of the year and the beginning of the business war. In less than half a year, it sold more than 140 million units, 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 Imanishi Hiroshi as the head of the first development department, leading a group of young people to specialize in the research and development of new products. It is said that Yokoi Gunpei was the happiest day at Nintendo.

Once on the Shinkansen, Yokoi Junhei was influenced by a young man playing with a handheld LCD electronic calculator, and he had the idea of ​​designing a portable game console. With the support of President Yamauchi, the idea gradually became It became a reality, and the world's first portable game console, Game&Watch, was born in the hands of Junpei Yokoi.The first game "Ball" achieved a cumulative sales of 8 million sets in just 300 months. By the time the fourth game "Donkey Kong" came out, with a very unique up-and-down symmetrical dual-screen design, the built-in "Donkey Kong" The game's Game&Watch set a new sales record again, and attracted many coveters. RB and even Taiwan's large and small game manufacturers rushed to follow suit and launched similar products. Among them, the rechargeable Game&Go series launched by the old rival Sega had the greatest influence. It even sparked a lawsuit between the two clubs.

Affected by the success of Atari Corporation, President Yamauchi had the idea of ​​entering the home game console market. Although Gunpei Yokoi was not responsible for the heavy responsibility this time, Masayuki Uemura, who was in charge of research and development, was poached from Sharp by him. And in the process of research and development, he also contributed the "cross key" used on the gamepad, and the final product is the Nintendo Famicom (FC), which has been popular for nearly ten years.

The successful development of GameBoy can be said to be the most glorious page in Yokoi Gunpei’s life. Although he was criticized when he showed the first machine to President Yamauchi, President Yamauchi said that the first machine was dim and blurred and had serious afterimages. The picture was very dissatisfied, and he also asserted: "Such a thing will definitely fail", but President Yamauchi still supported his idea of ​​improvement, so the later portable game console GameBoy came into being.Not long after, companies such as NEC, Atari, and Sega also launched their portable game consoles, all of which used the latest color LCD screens, and the performance of the game was much better than that of the GameBoy. Same time, they accused Junpei Yokoi of being "short-sighted and don't know how to adopt new technologies". This time, the support of President Yamauchi helped him overcome this difficulty, and GameBoy also achieved incredible success.

In 1991, an American company developed the latest technology of using high-brightness LEDs to form three-dimensional images, and a research institute affiliated to RB Keio University hoped to put this technology into practical use. Only red liquid crystals can be used to display a single color, but Yokoi Gunhei saw the future of portable game consoles, so after careful preparation, he proposed the development plan of VRBoy.Still the same as before, there are many people who oppose it, but President Yamauchi still trusts Gunpei Yokoi as before, and the VRBoy project was finally approved.

But then everything changed. With the disastrous launch of VRBoy, Junpei Yokoi found himself deserted. Except for the dozens of people in the first development department, the entire Nintendo couldn’t find anyone who was willing to support him. Even In the past, many relationships were pretty good, and even Shigeru Miyamoto, who has always been called his disciple, stood on the side against him.So far Yokoi Gunpei still doesn’t know that one of the main reasons for this situation is because of his outspokenness. Earlier this year, in an exclusive interview with RB Industry News, he said frankly: “Nintendo’s development route that has been implemented in the past is short, Small, light, and thin, President Yamauchi repeatedly emphasized this point to us in the 70s, but recently Nintendo's development direction has begun to deviate, and I personally have doubts about the necessity of emphasizing the high performance of 64-bit consoles... ", Such a statement caused an uproar in Nintendo, and even offended the active advocates of the 64 console plan, such as Arakawa Minoru, Miyamoto Shigeru, and Takeda Genyo. Ping and his first development department.

If VRBoy can achieve the expected success, then Yokoi Gunhei may be rejected again, but when President Yamauchi has lost his tolerance in the past and demands that VRBoy must be launched as soon as possible, no matter how many ideas Yokoi Gunhei has, he can only do so. The VRBoy, which is almost still a semi-finished product, can be put on the sales counter, and the result can be imagined.

After turning an intersection, you can already clearly see the Nintendo headquarters building not far away. Yokoi Gunpei looked to both sides, preparing to cross the intersection.

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

Yokoi Gunpei turned around and saw that it was his former colleague Masayuki Uemura, who resigned sadly because the project with Sony broke down, but now he looks pretty good, and it seems that these years should have been pretty good.The two knew each other when they were still in Sharp, and Gunpei Yokoi was credited to Masayuki Uemura for coming to Nintendo. happy.

"Uemura-kun, look at your complexion, you've been doing well these years, where is the high one now?"

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

"Hong Kong company? It seems that I haven't heard of any company engaged in research in this area. Could it be that there are no results yet?" Yokoi Junping asked suspiciously.

Masayuki Uemura smiled, took out a leaflet from his bag and handed it over, saying: "There are already results."

Junhei Yokoi looked at the skeptical result leaflet, and it turned out to be Sony's PS game console. He asked in surprise, "PS game console? Does this have anything to do with the Hong Kong company you mentioned?"

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

"Then congratulations Uemura-kun for getting what you want. Unexpectedly, after going around, the project of your second development department and Sony is still a success." Junhei Yokoi congratulated, but his tone was sour, maybe it was another Reminds me of my failed VRBoy.

"Yokoi-kun, do you have time for a chat?"

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

"Okay, how about going to the tavern we used to go to?"

"Okay, Uemura-kun, see you after get off work."

"Yokai-kun, goodbye."

After bidding farewell to Uemura Masayuki, Yokoi Gunpei crossed the road and walked into Nintendo's headquarters with his briefcase in his hands.In the elevator and in the corridor, Yokoi Junping could always hear some people gathering together and whispering. Although he couldn't hear what these people were saying, he could guess that it was not a good thing.

Walking into the somewhat empty first development department, Yokoi Gunhei was about to put down his briefcase, when Sakashita Masashi came over and said, "Yoshin-kun, the new announcement just this morning is due to the lack of manpower for the N64 project, so we need to A group of personnel will be withdrawn and added to Shigeru Miyamoto's intelligence development headquarters, and our first development department will transfer [-] people out this time."

"Twenty!" Junhei Yokoi threw his briefcase on his desk angrily, and was about to roar to vent his depression, but somehow, he suddenly became quiet again and asked, "Sakashita-san, Is there anything else?"

Seeing Junhei Yokoi's face suddenly changed from anger to calm, Masashi Sakashita was startled, and a trace of uneasiness surged in his heart, but the habit he had developed over the years still made him instinctively reply: "Mr. Yokoi, there is nothing else. about you……"

"It's okay, I'm fine." Gunhei Yokoi sensed Masashi Sakashita's uneasiness, and after explaining for a while, he continued, "Let's continue improving the GameBoy."

"Oh, okay." Sakashita Masashi sighed and turned to the next workbench.

Now that GameBoy has faded away, under the lure of the last madness of SFC (Super Nintendo) and the exquisite graphics of next-generation game consoles, people seem to have forgotten the GameBoy, a gadget that brought endless fun to everyone.In the eyes of others at Nintendo, if the GameBoy wants to revive the rivers and mountains, it must make great improvements in performance and display, otherwise it will not be able to compete with the beautiful pictures on the next-generation game consoles, but Yokoi Junping But he doesn’t see it this way. He thinks that GameBoy still has great potential, and there is still a lot of room for exploration, and the application of color LCD is not yet mature, so the best solution is to focus on the three aspects of portability, power saving and light weight. On the one hand, we will work hard to maximize the advantages of the GameBoy.It's a pity that even the president of Yamauchi didn't seem too optimistic about it this time. As a result, the first development department not only couldn't maintain its original strength, but even had to transfer people from the first development department for Nintendo's N64 plan. When the idea will be realized.

Taking a deep breath, Yokoi Junpei tried his best to calm down his emotions, then came to his desk and sat down, picked up a disassembled GameBoy on the table, and studied the PCB on the circuit board. Layout, while thinking about what places can be further streamlined.

(End of this chapter)