Gunpei Yokoi

Gunpei Yokoi was a Japanese video game designer who worked for Nintendo for over 30 years. He started as a maintenance engineer who impressed the president with his toy inventions, such as the Ultra Hand and the Love Tester. He then became one of the first game designers at Nintendo, creating the Game & Watch series of handheld games, which introduced the cross-shaped control pad. He also supervised the development of Donkey Kong and Mario Bros., and mentored Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario and Zelda. Yokoi's most famous creation was the Game Boy, a portable gaming device that sold over 100 million units worldwide and popularized the Tetris game. He also produced several successful game franchises, such as Metroid, Kid Icarus, and Fire Emblem. Yokoi's last project for Nintendo was the Virtual Boy, a 3D gaming system that failed commercially and critically. He left Nintendo in 1996 and founded his own company, Koto Laboratory, where he designed the WonderSwan, a handheld console that competed with the Game Boy in Japan. Yokoi died in a car accident in 1997 at the age of 56. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential and innovative game designers of all time, and his legacy lives on in many Nintendo products and games.