From Mary Bellis,
Your Guide to Inventors.
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Gunpei Yokoi was the creator of the Game Boy and Virtual Boy and worked on Famicom (and NES), the Metroid series, Game Boy Pocket and did extensive work on the system we know today as the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Gunpei Yokoi was born in 1941 and grew up in Kyoto where he graduated from Doshinsha University with a degree in electronics. He was first hired by Nintendo in 1965 to maintain the assembly-line machines used to manufacture its Hanafuda cards. In 1889, Nintendo began as a playing cards manufacturer, their Hanafuda playcards were very popular.

Later Gunpei Yokoi was reassigned as an engineer with newly formed games division - the first day on his new job Yokoi invented "The Ultrahand" which sold 1.2 million units the first Christmas season for $6 in 1970. The Ultrahand was Nintendo's first toy, it was a toy arm on an accordion like extension that kids could use as an extendable claw.

Yokoi left Nintendo in August, 1996 to set up his own toy company, Koto Co., in Kyoto.

On October 27, 1992, Nintendo of America Inc. registered the configuration of its hand-held game machine.

Continue > History of Computer & Video Games