Gunpei Yokoi (1941-1997), although not widely known even in the gaming community, could quite possible be considered the most important person in gaming history; he created many revolutionary devices, and his views on gaming are held in the highest regard by one of the largest video game companies in the world today.

Yokoi was born on the 10th of September, 1941, in Kyoto, Japan. As a child, his father constantly urged Yokoi to run the family business. However, Yokoi graduated college with a degree in electronics from Doshisha University.

Sometime later in life, at the age of 25, Yokoi got a job at Nintendo as a Hanafuda Playing Card assembly line maintenence electrician. This was before video games were around, and Nintendo's main product was the aforementioned cards. A little while after working there, Gunpei Yokoi designed and created the "Ultra Hand", a device that uses hinges to extend and grab far-off objects with the "hand" at the end. The then-president of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi, noticed the interesting device and ordered it to be developed as a proper product to be sold for the holiday rush. The Ultra Hand was so successful that Yokoi was promoted to Research and Development, and he started creating a variety of other toys for the company, such as the Ten Billion Barrel and the Nintendo Love Tester. Because of this, Yokoi was instantly a well-known name around the Nintendo staff.

Sometime around 1980, when Nintendo eventually began selling video games, Yokoi was riding a bullet train when he noticed a bored businessman playing around with his calculator. Seeing this, Yokoi started thinking of a way to make a hand-held game that could be used to pass the time. He created the Game & Watch, a portable game with an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screen, a built-in clock, and an alarm. The first one created was one called "Ball", in which the player must move the on-screen character's hands by pressing the left and right buttons in order to successfully juggle the balls. If a ball is dropped, the game is over, and the player must start over. The first Game & Watch game was an instant hit, and a slew of others were soon to follow.

Gunpei Yokoi did not only become successful; he taught Shigeru Miyamoto, the man that created Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Donkey Kong, and various other large Nintendo franchises. Miyamoto's father was a good friend of Yamauchi's, and Miyamoto had a few ideas for products to be sold by Nintendo. Because of the connections, Miyamoto was hired by Yamauchi, making it one of Yamauchi's many successful business moves. Upon arriving to the company, Miyamoto was assigned to learn from Yokoi, where he learned all he knew about game design. Soon afterwards, Miyamoto started developing Donkey Kong and various other titles with Yokoi.

In 1984, Yokoi was appointed to the general manager of the Research and Development 1 (R&D1) group. With Miyamoto, Yokoi helped to create many famous games, such as Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and even the original Mario Bros.. In 1985, after Miyamoto was appointed to his own R&D department, Yokoi and his R&D department were responsible for a few other games, including Kid Icarus and Metroid. A year later, a part of R&D1 branched off to form Intelligent Systems, and Yokoi produced Battle Clash, Panel de Pon, and Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifa. R&D1 also developed the Robotic Operating Buddy (R.O.B.), which was used in a bundle with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), in order for it to appear more like a toy than a video game, because shops would not purchase video game systems after the video game market crash. The rest of R&D1 and Yokoi began developing the Game Boy, the most successful hand-held console ever made, selling 300,000 copies in Japan within the first week, and 40,000 in the United States within the first day.

The Game Boy, released in 1989, was perhaps Yokoi's most important creation. Not only did it have astounding sales at first, it went on to sell over 50 million units, a record gone unbroken even today. The Game Boy appears to be the successor to the Game & Watch, but it combines the Game & Watch's protability with the NES's interchangable cartridges, allowing multiple games to be played on one system. It presented games on a monochromatic screen, displaying them in black and green. Even when higher-ranking Nintendo staff wanted a full-color screen to be on the Game Boy, Yokoi refused to do so because it would have had a significantly shorter battery life. Yokoi's instincts proved true, as the Game Boy had a longer battery life, more games, and was cheaper than its competitors. Still, some fans demanded a Game Boy with color. Yokoi and Nintendo humorously teased them by releasing a line of Game Boys that were only painted different colors. Continued Here.