Death of Gunpei Yokoi

Gunpei Yokoi (September 10, 1941 – October 4, 1997), was a video game designer for Nintendo. He was responsible for the Game & Watch, the D-pad, R.O.B., Game Boy, and the Virtual Boy. He was also involved with the Metroid and Kid Icarus games. He had the philosophy of using lateral thinking with withered technology which means using technology that is cheap to make as well as easy to understand to use with products. Nintendo follows this philosophy today.

After the failure of the Virtual Boy, Yokoi left Nintendo and created the Bandai WonderSwan to compete with his own creation the Game Boy.

On October 4, 1997, Yokoi was involved with a car accident. When he left the car to inspect the damage, he got hit by a passing car and was pronounced dead two hours later.

This page is dedicated to Gunpei Yokoi.