June 11, 2025 • 36 mins
The Nintendo Switch 2 is out – but why did Nintendo credit someone who died in 1997 in a press release for the console? Dexter talked to Patrick Klepek, of the video game website Remap, and Jeremy Parish, an expert in video game history, to tell the story of Gunpei Yokoi and how his influence led us to the Switch 2.
Read + Watch:
- Patrick's article on Switch 2 games he's excited to play with his kids – https://www.crossplay.news/p/best-games-for-kids-and-families-june-2025
- Jeremy on Bad Dudes and Ronald Reagan – https://youtu.be/ZpZddGOKrIk
- Did You Know Gaming on Gunpei Yokoi – https://youtu.be/uLznLtgcqXI
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up killswitch@kaleidoscope.nyc, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
The Nintendo switch to is finally out. Came out last week.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
The moment has arrived.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
My switch to is here.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
It's been eight long years.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
Well, folks, it is currently one six in the morning,
and I just got home from the Best By midnight
launch for the Nintendo Switch Too.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
And here is a close up look at those new
magnetic joy cons. It's bigger, it's more rigid, it feels
more premium. The buttons are bigger. Speaking of bigger, the
doc got a little redesigned not earlier.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Did I manage to pick up the Nintendo switch too,
But I also got as many accessories as humanly possible, and.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I've got the freaking switch to.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Are you ready to dive in?
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Let me know the comment saw below how freaking cool
this is.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I do not have one yet, but I thought maybe
now it was a good time to talk about the
people who made the switch to Nintendo, because they're kind
of a weird company.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
So I was invited to a event in New York
for media to come play the switch to early. And
I walk in and as I'm approaching, there are just
two long lines of Nintendo employees like awaiting me and
like the seven people who are like walking through and
(01:30):
they all just start clapping and hooting and hollering like yeah,
you get to play Switch, dude, And I'm like ah,
and I walked through.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Wait, hold on, there's seven of you, and how many
of the.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Employees triple that? Like like like wives, way more than that.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Petrick Clippik and I used to work together Vice back
in the day. He now runs a podcast at Remap
Radio with some other VICE friends, and he also writes
a substack called cross Play about playing video games with kids.
He got to play the Switch too early and later
on we'll get his thoughts about it.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
Work got weird was there was sort of like a
media space and I would go over there kind of
collect my thoughts. What else do I need to go do?
I was like, all right, I'm gonna go back because
I didn't play this and and play that. And I
walk in again and those same people are there waiting,
like who's ready to play Switch too? And I'm like
(02:27):
I was, I was just I was just here, Like
I was just here, and then happen to be three
times over the course of the like six hours. So
it's a little it was a little culty, but it
was very funny.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
So this episode isn't really about the as Patrick put it,
the slightly culty part of Nintendo's culture, which does exist.
But Nintendo is a unique video game company for another reason.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
I think what's fascint about Nintendo is that they have
survived as long as they have. You know, my Microsoft
is a relative newcomer. Sega came into the hardware business
and last the hardware business. The thing about Nintendo is
that their kind of conservative nature has allowed them to
survive big ups and big downs. Like they were making
(03:17):
games that cost less required fewer people in an industry
in which games are becoming more expensive to make, requiring
more people. I think it's a corporate culture that goes
back to the origins of the company at the executive level.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
A lot of people compare Nintendo to Disney, and those
comparisons make a lot of sense. But when Patrick says
conservative here, it doesn't just mean being family friendly or
not taking risks. It can also mean thinking seriously about
what you've already got and what you can make with it.
And Patrick's right that culture does go back to the
(03:58):
origins of the company, at least the company as we
know it. Specifically, it goes back to one guy, someone
that even most hardcore video game fans have never heard of.
His name is Goompe Yokoi, and I would argue that
he's the guy who made Nintendo. Nintendo, I'm Afraid from
(04:27):
Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is kill Switch.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
I'm Dexter Thomas, I'm Char, I'm char. Good Bye.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Nintendo as a company goes back to eighteen eighty nine.
They were best known as a producer of playing cards,
specifically hanafuda, which are a kind of traditional Japanese card.
They're a little smaller than the western cards you might
be familiar with, and they have these images of flowers
or birds on the front. And people still play this
game today. But Nintendo didn't become a household name until
(05:27):
they pivoted to video games. And there's one specific person
that we should probably credit for making Nintendo what it
is today. Now. When I say that, a lot of
people might think of Shagero Miyamoto, which is fair because
he's the guy who created Mario and Zelda. But the
guy that I'm talking about was there before Miyamoto even
(05:47):
joined the company. A young electrical engineer named Gumpe Yukoi.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
He was kind of their original creative lead, if you will.
The company kind of started their R and D division
for him.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
To understand Yukoi's influence on Nintendo called the Jeremy Parrish.
He's been reporting on and researching game history for years now.
He's even got an entire YouTube channel dedicated to it,
and Ucoy's name comes up a lot there.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
He joined the company I think back in the nineteen
sixties or so, when Nintendo was still trying to figure
out what it was. You know, that was the era
where they were licensing peanuts from the US Charlie Brown
and Snoopy and trying to create stuff around that. They
were selling Ramen like instant Ramen, basically like any trend
that they could find, they would jump on it, hoping
(06:37):
for some sort of hit. They had their own lego
knockoff called n Block, and the company really didn't have
a direction beyond we want to make money somehow.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Good direction? So why would they need an electrical engineer
like Ukoi. Let's back up, and I can tell you
the story that's in the closest thing to an autobiography
that Yukoi ever wrote, which is in an interview in
a book by a reporter named Makiino Takifumi. So the
kind of cards that Nintendo made weren't just for families
(07:11):
to gather around and pass the time. They were also
good for gambling, and part of Nintendo's early customer base
was illegal gambling houses. And if you've ever been to Vegas,
you know gamblers take the quality of the cards very seriously.
If there's a defect in the manufacturing, the players will
notice it a little mark on a card here, or
(07:31):
a divid in the surface there, and a player can
use that to figure out what card it is and
a cheat. And apparently Nintendo's cards weren't always perfect, and
occasionally some quote scary looking yakaza would show up directly
at Nintendo's office and well, they would voice their concerns
(07:52):
about the cards. So if the cards aren't being manufactured evenly,
one solution is to use a machine to put them together.
But the machine that Nintendo had bought wasn't working well.
So when Gumpeykoi first got hired in Nintendo, the first
project they put him on was fixing the glue machine
for the cards.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Supposedly, legend has it that he was kind of assigned
to the night shift managing the factory and the assembly lines,
and it was a pretty boring task, so he would
just tinker and create things. And he created like an
accordion style device that you could open up and it
would contract, and then it had clamps on the end,
(08:32):
and if you closed it, you know, close the grips again,
then it would extend and close the grips on the
other end. And supposedly the company's president, Hiroshiyamauchi, who was always,
you know, always out looking for good ideas, saw this
thing that Yokoi had put together just to kill time,
and said, this is something that has play value. This
(08:53):
is something we could sell to people. So they created
the Ultra Hand and that was Nintendo's first hit toy
in the nineteen sixties. So, you know, Yokoi created this
hit and Nintendo basically said you're our guy, now do
this kind of thing again, and he did.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
So gumpe Akoi kept cranking out these hit toy products,
but the toys he made were kind of weird.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
One of the toys is a race car called Lefty RX.
And the reason it's called Lefty RX is because it's
a remote control car. That's the RX that can only
turn left. It cannot turn.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Right, only left, only left.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
It goes in a straight line and you can turn left.
And that sounds like the worst toy imaginable. But the
thing is, when it was created in the nineteen seventies,
remote control cars were very very expensive, and having that
full chassis on a remote control car that can go
in both directions, can reverse, and also having a remote
(09:58):
control that has steering wheel and all the necessary buttons
and everything, it made those very expensive. And Yokoi's idea
with left DRX was what if we stripped out all
but the most basic functions to create an affordable remote
control car that any kid can own. So, all of
a sudden, with the left RX, you didn't have to
(10:20):
be one of the rich kids to have a cool
remote control car. You could have a slightly less cool
remote control car, but it was yours and it would
still race. It's just you know, you had to put
it on a race track. And it made sense because
you know, you look at enough one track, basic oval track,
it's just going to be your car is going to
be turning left.
Speaker 6 (10:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
So that's all they I mean, not all they do,
you know, offence of the NASCAR fans out there. But yeah,
essentially it is a sport in which you go straight
and turn left.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yes, so Yokoi tapped into that. It was vastly less expensive,
you know, like a quarter of the cost of a
remote control racing car that had the full set of features.
Koy sort of democratized this technology, but at the same
time created something that was very profitable for Nintendo. So
it's not like he was, you know, some great man
(11:09):
of the people or something. He was a businessman. He
was making money for his employer, but doing it in
a way that opened up the field for the biggest
audience possible. And you know, using limited technology, using something
that seems underwhelming on the face of it, but still
ultimately it's functional and fun.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And this speaks to a philosophy that gumpe Ukoy had
which is still courts to Nintendo today. His phrase was
kut atajijitsu no siejeskal, which if you translate it literally
is something like lateral thinking with withered technology, or another
way to put it might be something like taking mature
technology and thinking sideways.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
The idea is that you take something that is not
cutting edge tech that is not necessarily intuitive like the
new hot thing. It's been around for a while, and
that kind of works to its advantage. Find new applications
for this old technology, this old gadget or gimmick or
(12:13):
CPU or whatever, and create fun out of that, to
create something that one kind of gives kids and consumers
a fresh take on something that might be sort of
familiar and that they take for granted. But also because
this technology is old and well established, it's usually created
(12:37):
at scale, and so it's readily available as a component.
So you know, you can basically put together off the
shelf parts and very inexpensively come up with something that
can be created in mass manufacturing and distributed and be
very profitable. So it's one part kind of pure mad
(12:59):
cap and vence and one part business practicality. And eventually,
once Nintendo kind of went all in on video games,
they brought him in and said, please apply that creativity
to video games. And so you saw things like game
and Watch, and you saw things like game.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Boy, and this concept is still being referenced by Nintendo.
When one of the developers for the switch to was
asked about how the new JOYCN could be used as mice.
This is what he had to say, implementing mouse control
that's widely used nowadays in the Joycon controllers, isn't that costly?
And I think that's exactly what Lateral thinking of whither
(13:38):
technology is all about. Nintendo is still citing this philosophy
decades after Goompey entered the company, but we still haven't
talked about the games. How did goompe Eucoi's philosophy lead
to Nintendo's biggest early video game hits? That's after the
break felt the nineteen seventies, Goompey, a coy came up
(14:09):
with tons of toys for Nintendo, and they were all
pretty quirky. There was a puzzle game, There was an
extendable periscope. He made this thing called the Love Tester,
which supposedly measure your compatibility with a romantic partner, but
really just boys would buy it so they could get
girls to hold their hands. Goope had even started making
games for arcades. But the thing that really brought Nintendo
(14:32):
into some serious cash was this right here.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Game, what game? What game? What game?
Speaker 1 (14:53):
If you play Smash Brothers, you might have recognized the
name there game and watch the game and Watch came
out in Night and this was Nintendo and goompe Ucoy's
first real video game hit, so right.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
From the gate when those debuted in nineteen eighty with Ball,
a very simple juggling game where you have a guy
with you know, arms, and you just have to like
keep balls in the air. That's sold I want to
say half a million a million units. It became a
worldwide hit.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Ball is as simple as it sounds, and it was
the game that first came out with Game and Watch.
And again, if you play Smash Brothers, that's the character
you play as. And you could buy different Game and
Watch games and they were all equally simple. There was Ball,
there was a game where you dodge falling objects. There
was a really simple version of Whack a Mole. But
Game and Watch wasn't just a gaming console. It was
(15:49):
also a literal watch.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
When it was in sort of a neutral mode, it
would switch over to like a display clock. You could
set an alarm on it. The time piece element was
sort of built in from the start because the idea
behind Game and Watch was taking the fundamental technology the
powered the brand new LCD wristwatches that were kind of
making their rounds from Cassio and other companies and taking
(16:16):
that screen technology and approaching it a different way to
create entertainment out of it.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
So how did Ukoy come up with this thing? This
is where we start getting into the era where Ukoy
was starting to become something of a legend. So there
are a few stories about this. The most popular one
is that he got the idea from seeing businessmen on
the train absent mindedly playing with their calculators, and he
decided to make a product out of this. Maybe there
(16:45):
is some truth to that, and it is a nice story, but.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
I think that's probably somewhat apocryphal. Most likely what happened
was before Game and Watch came out. Milton Bradley created
a game system portable game system called Microvision that was
in nineteen seventy nine, and Nintendo's designers and developers have
referenced Microvision when talking about the Game Boy, and that
(17:13):
you know, game Boy was ten years after Microvision came out.
But that system was big and unwieldy and kind of
a weird piece of tech. It had like a bowling
game that barely resembles bowling. It had a casino game
that barely resembles a slot machine, So that definitely caught
a Nintendo's eye, and I think what happened was, you know,
(17:34):
they said, we've got to do something like this, and
they looked at, you know, the technology that they saw
in LCD wristwatches and said, oh, okay, like we could
do something along those lines. We could take that technology
and approach the idea of video game displays differently than
the standard pixel grit. What they did was they just
(17:58):
silk screened onto an old screen and created little characters,
very detailed characters and images that are pre built into
the screen light up. It was built around I believe
sharp LCD technology and they were mass manufacturing millions and
millions of these screens. So they took something that was
a prevailing trend at the time but used in one way,
(18:21):
and said what if we use this a different way?
And it was a huge hit, made them tons of money.
These were hits in Japan, but also in the US,
but also in Europe and also in the Middle East
and you know, parts of East Asia and Africa, like anywhere,
you know, anywhere people bought consumer products and enjoyed entertainment.
(18:44):
They could buy a game.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
And watch It makes sense because these were such simple
games that they didn't need translation or even a manual.
Just pick it up and you immediately know how to play.
Just recently, the Video Game History Foundation found what is
probably Nintendo's first EVA commercial in the USA in nineteen eighty.
They weren't big enough to distribute their products internationally by
(19:05):
themselves yet, so some other company did it and called
it time Out. But other than that label, this is
definitely the game and watch.
Speaker 6 (19:14):
Jah Ying gave you falling notches, take time out. Tennis
gave you tennis elbow, take time out. Then you electronic
spot this timeout games called toss Up. It plays an
easy game and a hard game. It recauds your highest
score and even tells time plus.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Yeah again like using low power, inexpensive, easily accessible technology,
and a really clever way to create great play value
and fun.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
And this is where the directional pad came from. Also right, yes,
the Donkey Kong game and Watch. When they sat down
to adapt Donkey Kong into game and watch forum, they
created the crosspad. The crosspad, also known as the direction
or the d pad, basically think of the part of
the controller that you use to make Mario walk left
(20:06):
or right crosspads are so ubiquitous now that it might
seem like they've been around forever, But back in the
seventies and even into the eighties, arcade games or home
console games would use joysticks or left or right buttons,
or switches or even circular dials to move. Pretty often,
playing a new game also meant having to learn a
brand new interface just to make your character move left
(20:29):
or right. It was Nintendo's Game and Watch that first
introduced the crosspad.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
That was this moment that changed everything for video games.
The crosspad came from Game and Watch and became an
integral part of not only their system, but so many
other systems we have.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Basically every single system after that is used some version
from I mean Super Nintendo, you know, PlayStation, all the segasystems,
all the Microsoft systems to Xbox, everything has used some
version of that an original directional crosspad. Video games were
starting to make serious money for Nintendo. Donkey Kong hit
arcades in nineteen eighty one and that was a massive hit,
(21:10):
And in nineteen eighty three they put out their first
home console. In Japan, it was called the Famicom. Here
in the States it was the Nintendo Entertainment System, and
we got it in late eighty five early nineteen eighty six.
But this whole time they were still making and selling
game and watch units. Other companies were starting to copy
their designs, which Yukoi himself didn't really mind, but of course,
(21:33):
the president of Nintendo needed another hit product. By this point,
Yukoi was the head of his own R and D
department with a team of engineers working under him, and
in nineteen eighty nine, this department created a new handheld
gaming device, the game Boy, and this is probably the
most famous expression of goompey Ocoy's philosophy of sideways thinking
(21:56):
using old technology for a new purpose.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
At the heart of the game Boy, you have a
Z eighty processor, and those have been around since the seventies.
A lot of the early computers used those early game consoles,
like the Calico Vision SAG SG one thousand. But by
the time Game Boy came out, you know, the SG
one thousand line Master system was on its way out
(22:20):
like that, that technology was being deprecated, and Nintendo went
with that because there were hundreds of millions of Z
eighty's in the world, like they were cheapest chips. And
it was functional. It was capable, not super powerful, not
cutting edge in any way, but it did the job.
It was a proven piece of technology for video games,
(22:42):
so it was very easy to make games for game Boy.
But you know, the thing that people always go back
to with game Boy is that the screen was garbage. Yes,
it really seems like they went out of their way
to find the worst screens possible, but they were cheap,
they were very inexpensive, and so game Boy worked out
for them very popular.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Just to back up here, at the time, game Boy
on paper probably sounded like an incredibly bad idea. I mean,
it's easy to look back now in hindsight and say, well,
hey man, that was back in nineteen eighty nine. Cut
them some slack. It was gonna be a little bit primitive.
But no, this thing was garbage even by nineteen eighty
(23:23):
nine standards. And when it was first being released, there
were reviewers who reviewed it very harshly, saying that the
hardware was primitive and the screen looked bad, and they
were correct. But then the thing actually hits the market
and it turns out hardware specs don't actually matter. It's
all about the games and how you put it together.
(23:45):
The obvious early highlight would be Tetris. This game was
pushing three million units sold within months, and it was
also one of the first things to help solidify video
games is not just for little kids, but something that
adults could also pick up and play. I could list
other hits or high lights like Kirby or the game
Boy Camera or Pokemon definitely, But maybe the most impressive
(24:08):
thing here is that the game Boy came out again
in nineteen eighty nine, and Nintendo put out their final
game Boy game in nineteen ninety nine. But that's only
if you only count the game Boy itself. If you're
also willing to count the game Boy Color, which is
mostly compatible with the original. The US got its final
game in late two thousand and two. That's thirteen years
(24:31):
of complete market domination in an era when game systems
usually got replaced after just a few years.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Game Boy was the best selling game system of the
twentieth century. Like it outsold any acid outsold PlayStation, and
nothing came close to the numbers that game Boy did.
Game Boy was a solid platform that had technology that
was just fairly good enough. But again, you know, it
drew very little power. The Atari Links, the Sega game Gear,
(25:02):
Turbo Express. We're all kind of competing at the same time,
and all of those had much greater power, full color screens, backlighting,
and those things would chew through four to six double
A batteries and like an hour and a half two hours.
Game Boy could run on four double a's for about
twenty hours. Yeah, and it's got your favorite guys like
(25:26):
Mario and Link and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Goombay Okoy left Nintendo in nineteen ninety six to start
his own company. From now on, he'd be a competitor,
which probably made Nintendo a little nervous. It definitely made
investors nervous because when word got out that goombay Okoy
was leaving, Nintendo's stock fell so hard, so fast that
the Tokyo Stock Exchange had to stop trading for a while.
(25:53):
But that situation didn't last long. The very next year,
Yukoi was riding as a passenger in a car with
a front The car we're ended someone and u Koi
got out to look at the damage. Just then another
car hit both of them. The friend was injured, but
your Koi was killed. A lot of the higher ups
(26:16):
in Nintendo now worked personally with Ukoi in the past.
Shigero Miyamoto, who again is the guy who created Zelda
and Mario, sometimes talks about him in interviews, but even
if it's not being mentioned directly, Yukoi's philosophy is something
that Nintendo always comes back to, especially when things don't
go well.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
I mean, they have had their moments where it has
felt like they have chased the powerhouse systems. You know,
I'd argue that maybe we you felt a little bit
like that, although we was doing some interesting things as well,
but you know, GameCube maybe a little bit like that.
It seemed like they kind of felt like, all right,
this Xbox things on the market, we got to look
(26:59):
like the Xbox, right.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
I feel like when Nintendo has chased power and tried
to be at the cutting edge of the industry, they've
they've found diminishing returns on that. The Super as was
very powerful, and it sold nowhere near as well as
the NES. The N sixty four was cutting edge. They
made a big deal about you know, real time toy
(27:22):
story and Jurassic Park graphics, and that sold even more poorly,
especially in Japan. GameCube really kind of bottomed out and
that was that was them trying to play in the
same arena as Xbox and PlayStation two, and that was
you know, kind of their I think, come to Jesus moment.
If it hadn't been for the game Boy line, they
(27:43):
would have been lost with the GameCube. So I think that,
you know, that was the moment where they stopped and said,
we need to recalibrate and stop chasing power because we
can't keep up with the competition. We can't stay at
the cutting edge. It's just not going to work for us.
And so, you know, then you get the DS and
you get the Wii, which took existing technologies and applied
(28:05):
them in really novel, interesting and intuitive ways, and those
were their best selling systems ever. And they kind of
touch it with that again with WEU trying to create
something that was you know, kind of on par with
PS three, and it was a bad idea, so they
kind of reversed course and went back with Switch, and
(28:26):
you know, unsurprisingly, it's been hugely successful because it really
played to Nintendo's poor competency, which is working with slightly
less powerful technology but doing interesting and appealing things with it.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
So it's kind of like every time they chase power,
you know, they kind of veer off course and really
doesn't work well for them. When they come back and
apply the kind of stuff that gumpe Yukoi was going for,
they started to get back on track in terms of
sales exactly. So how how exactly did goompe Accoy's influence
(29:02):
feed directly into the Switch and now the Switch too.
That's after the break. So we mentioned this before, but
before the first Switch came out in twenty seventeen, Nintendo
(29:25):
had a big flop with the WIU. This was their
successor to the we It did not do well at all,
but they took some lessons from that to the Switch.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
The WUT conceptually was a bad idea. What also happened
Nintendo was, despite being technologically generation behind, their teams could
not support building parallel games, which is like they were
making games for the their handheld platforms and for their
console platforms.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
That's because at the time they had their handheld successor
to the Game Boy, the three DS, and the WIU
on the market at the same time. Again, my former
colleague Patrick Klippick.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
Part of what happens with the Switch is what if
everything we do we don't have a handheld track and
a console track. It's just one and that allows us
to consolidate our expertise, our engineering, our design. But it
also means like there's not something to save you, right,
like if the weu underperforms, if the game Uwan performs, well,
(30:29):
don't worry. The handheld business is picking up the slack.
If the switch didn't work out, there was nothing to
pick up the slack. And there's every reason to wonder
what would Nintendo be if the switch hadn't taken off
for whatever reason. But obviously the sort of capture lightning
in a bottle that goes hand in hand with Breath
of the Wild not just being like a good or
a great game, but like a once in a lifetime,
(30:52):
like once in a generation style game that like really
hits the masses.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
And the switch is an another great example of your
COIs philosophy and influence.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
The switch is just fascinating because the original switch is
based on an Nvidia mobile phone chip from ten plus
years ago, Like it's remarkable what Nintendo was able to
get out of it. And then a couple of years
in COVID happens and the explosion and interest in video games.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
The Switch ended up being a smash hit and it
really took off in twenty twenty during lockdown.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
People finding stuff to do at home, the sort of
serendipitous launch of animal Crossing, which they couldn't have predicted,
that just sort of happened alongside, you know, lockdowns and
people looking for stuff to do. And it's like they
had a a platform that could be played like on
TV or around the house, and then launched a social
game at a time people were desperate for any sort
(31:49):
of social activity and then the Switch like just explodes
like during that period. It just makes for a very
unique set of circumstances for the company.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
You've played the switch to? What's it like? What do
you think?
Speaker 4 (32:03):
Have you played a switch?
Speaker 1 (32:04):
I have played the Switch?
Speaker 4 (32:06):
So you have played a switch to? Okay, which I think?
You know, Wait, does that mean you're not impressed? I
don't think they're trying to impress anybody. I think I
think the switch too is Nintendo. Do people really like
the Switch? Do they really want us to reinvent the Wheel?
(32:27):
And I think what they have said is like their
bet is that people would just like a nicer switch,
and that's what the Switch to is it is a
nicer switch, better graphics, more capable, nicer joy cons a
better kind of fit and finish. And then I think
from a Nintendo's perspective, like, why did they do the
(32:47):
Wii well, the GameCube felt like they ran into a
wall and had to do something different. Why did they
do the switch well, the we you ran into a
wall and they had to do something different. There's really
no indications from the runaway success of the switch that
they should do something fundamentally different. So I think from
their perspective, a switch like a more powerful switch, like
(33:09):
we see this with phones with tablets. Is the switch
now just a ubiquitous device in a lot of people's
lives where hey, like every five ten years or whenever
it breaks or I hand, I hand one off to
my kid, I go get the new one, And is
the switch going to be like that device like that
for people? The switch to is kind of the real
(33:29):
test of where does it fit in people's lives?
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Do you see personally any connection between say, the switch
to and goompe Ocoid's philosophy or legacy.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I mean in the sense that switch to is the
successor to switch and really doesn't change much about the
way the switch is built, where you've got the kind
of self contained device that is a screen and a
processor and RAM and a cartlot and then you have
the controllers that can be removed and swapped around, and
it plugs into a port to a DOC to connect
(34:09):
to a TV. I think Yokoya would look at the
switch and say, you know, this is this is it?
Like this is great stuff right here. I do think
it is very true to Gunpay yokoy Is design concepts
and the thinking that he brought to Nintendo's products, not
just their games, but many of their products. It does
(34:29):
make me happy to see his kind of spirit live
on and continue through this.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
I want to give a big shout out to our
first guest, Patrick Klippik. He's got a right up on
crossplay dot substack dot com where he's laying out all
the games he's looking forward to on the switch too.
So if you're thinking about getting one, and you know,
if the player two or player three in your life
just so happens to be a kid, that might be
something you want to check out. And also big shout
(35:04):
out to Jeremy Perish if you're interested at all in
video game and history seriously, his YouTube channel is mandatory watching.
And also, speaking of videos, right as we were putting
this together, the YouTube channel did you know Gaming dropped
almost an hour long episode on Goompayakoy. What can I say?
Great minds think alike. So if you're interested in knowing
(35:26):
more specifically just about goompay Acoy's life story, because honestly,
there isn't a whole lot of info about him in English,
that's a great video to check out. Also, and once again,
all those links are in the show notes. Lastly, also
a big shout out to you the listener for indulging
me as I basically just go full fanboy about Nintendo,
(35:46):
so I appreciate that also. But anyway, let me know
what you think. You can hit us up at kill
Switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC with any thoughts. You could
also hit me directly at dex digi that's d e
x d I g I, either on Instagram or Blue
Sky if that's more your thing. And if you like
this episode, leave us a review because it really helps
(36:07):
people find the show and that in turn helps us
keep doing our thing. Kill Switch is hosted by me
Dexter Thomas. It's produced by Shena Ozaki, darl Of Potts
and Kate Osborne. The theme song is written by me
and Kyle Murdoch, and Kyle also mixes a show from Kaleidoscope.
Our executive producers are Ozwa Washin, Mangesh Hotigadur and Kate Osborne.
(36:30):
From iHeart, our executive producers are Katrina Norvil and Nikki E.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
Tour.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
If you've got any game recommendations, send it to me,
but until then we'll catch you on the next one.
The Nintendo switch to is finally out. Came out last week.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
The moment has arrived.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
My switch to is here.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
It's been eight long years.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
Well, folks, it is currently one six in the morning,
and I just got home from the Best By midnight
launch for the Nintendo Switch Too.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
And here is a close up look at those new
magnetic joy cons. It's bigger, it's more rigid, it feels
more premium. The buttons are bigger. Speaking of bigger, the
doc got a little redesigned not earlier.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Did I manage to pick up the Nintendo switch too,
But I also got as many accessories as humanly possible, and.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I've got the freaking switch to.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Are you ready to dive in?
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Let me know the comment saw below how freaking cool
this is.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I do not have one yet, but I thought maybe
now it was a good time to talk about the
people who made the switch to Nintendo, because they're kind
of a weird company.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
So I was invited to a event in New York
for media to come play the switch to early. And
I walk in and as I'm approaching, there are just
two long lines of Nintendo employees like awaiting me and
like the seven people who are like walking through and
(01:30):
they all just start clapping and hooting and hollering like yeah,
you get to play Switch, dude, And I'm like ah,
and I walked through.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Wait, hold on, there's seven of you, and how many
of the.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Employees triple that? Like like like wives, way more than that.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Petrick Clippik and I used to work together Vice back
in the day. He now runs a podcast at Remap
Radio with some other VICE friends, and he also writes
a substack called cross Play about playing video games with kids.
He got to play the Switch too early and later
on we'll get his thoughts about it.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
Work got weird was there was sort of like a
media space and I would go over there kind of
collect my thoughts. What else do I need to go do?
I was like, all right, I'm gonna go back because
I didn't play this and and play that. And I
walk in again and those same people are there waiting,
like who's ready to play Switch too? And I'm like
(02:27):
I was, I was just I was just here, Like
I was just here, and then happen to be three
times over the course of the like six hours. So
it's a little it was a little culty, but it
was very funny.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
So this episode isn't really about the as Patrick put it,
the slightly culty part of Nintendo's culture, which does exist.
But Nintendo is a unique video game company for another reason.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
I think what's fascint about Nintendo is that they have
survived as long as they have. You know, my Microsoft
is a relative newcomer. Sega came into the hardware business
and last the hardware business. The thing about Nintendo is
that their kind of conservative nature has allowed them to
survive big ups and big downs. Like they were making
(03:17):
games that cost less required fewer people in an industry
in which games are becoming more expensive to make, requiring
more people. I think it's a corporate culture that goes
back to the origins of the company at the executive level.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
A lot of people compare Nintendo to Disney, and those
comparisons make a lot of sense. But when Patrick says
conservative here, it doesn't just mean being family friendly or
not taking risks. It can also mean thinking seriously about
what you've already got and what you can make with it.
And Patrick's right that culture does go back to the
(03:58):
origins of the company, at least the company as we
know it. Specifically, it goes back to one guy, someone
that even most hardcore video game fans have never heard of.
His name is Goompe Yokoi, and I would argue that
he's the guy who made Nintendo. Nintendo, I'm Afraid from
(04:27):
Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is kill Switch.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
I'm Dexter Thomas, I'm Char, I'm char. Good Bye.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Nintendo as a company goes back to eighteen eighty nine.
They were best known as a producer of playing cards,
specifically hanafuda, which are a kind of traditional Japanese card.
They're a little smaller than the western cards you might
be familiar with, and they have these images of flowers
or birds on the front. And people still play this
game today. But Nintendo didn't become a household name until
(05:27):
they pivoted to video games. And there's one specific person
that we should probably credit for making Nintendo what it
is today. Now. When I say that, a lot of
people might think of Shagero Miyamoto, which is fair because
he's the guy who created Mario and Zelda. But the
guy that I'm talking about was there before Miyamoto even
(05:47):
joined the company. A young electrical engineer named Gumpe Yukoi.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
He was kind of their original creative lead, if you will.
The company kind of started their R and D division
for him.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
To understand Yukoi's influence on Nintendo called the Jeremy Parrish.
He's been reporting on and researching game history for years now.
He's even got an entire YouTube channel dedicated to it,
and Ucoy's name comes up a lot there.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
He joined the company I think back in the nineteen
sixties or so, when Nintendo was still trying to figure
out what it was. You know, that was the era
where they were licensing peanuts from the US Charlie Brown
and Snoopy and trying to create stuff around that. They
were selling Ramen like instant Ramen, basically like any trend
that they could find, they would jump on it, hoping
(06:37):
for some sort of hit. They had their own lego
knockoff called n Block, and the company really didn't have
a direction beyond we want to make money somehow.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Good direction? So why would they need an electrical engineer
like Ukoi. Let's back up, and I can tell you
the story that's in the closest thing to an autobiography
that Yukoi ever wrote, which is in an interview in
a book by a reporter named Makiino Takifumi. So the
kind of cards that Nintendo made weren't just for families
(07:11):
to gather around and pass the time. They were also
good for gambling, and part of Nintendo's early customer base
was illegal gambling houses. And if you've ever been to Vegas,
you know gamblers take the quality of the cards very seriously.
If there's a defect in the manufacturing, the players will
notice it a little mark on a card here, or
(07:31):
a divid in the surface there, and a player can
use that to figure out what card it is and
a cheat. And apparently Nintendo's cards weren't always perfect, and
occasionally some quote scary looking yakaza would show up directly
at Nintendo's office and well, they would voice their concerns
(07:52):
about the cards. So if the cards aren't being manufactured evenly,
one solution is to use a machine to put them together.
But the machine that Nintendo had bought wasn't working well.
So when Gumpeykoi first got hired in Nintendo, the first
project they put him on was fixing the glue machine
for the cards.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Supposedly, legend has it that he was kind of assigned
to the night shift managing the factory and the assembly lines,
and it was a pretty boring task, so he would
just tinker and create things. And he created like an
accordion style device that you could open up and it
would contract, and then it had clamps on the end,
(08:32):
and if you closed it, you know, close the grips again,
then it would extend and close the grips on the
other end. And supposedly the company's president, Hiroshiyamauchi, who was always,
you know, always out looking for good ideas, saw this
thing that Yokoi had put together just to kill time,
and said, this is something that has play value. This
(08:53):
is something we could sell to people. So they created
the Ultra Hand and that was Nintendo's first hit toy
in the nineteen sixties. So, you know, Yokoi created this
hit and Nintendo basically said you're our guy, now do
this kind of thing again, and he did.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
So gumpe Akoi kept cranking out these hit toy products,
but the toys he made were kind of weird.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
One of the toys is a race car called Lefty RX.
And the reason it's called Lefty RX is because it's
a remote control car. That's the RX that can only
turn left. It cannot turn.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Right, only left, only left.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
It goes in a straight line and you can turn left.
And that sounds like the worst toy imaginable. But the
thing is, when it was created in the nineteen seventies,
remote control cars were very very expensive, and having that
full chassis on a remote control car that can go
in both directions, can reverse, and also having a remote
(09:58):
control that has steering wheel and all the necessary buttons
and everything, it made those very expensive. And Yokoi's idea
with left DRX was what if we stripped out all
but the most basic functions to create an affordable remote
control car that any kid can own. So, all of
a sudden, with the left RX, you didn't have to
(10:20):
be one of the rich kids to have a cool
remote control car. You could have a slightly less cool
remote control car, but it was yours and it would
still race. It's just you know, you had to put
it on a race track. And it made sense because
you know, you look at enough one track, basic oval track,
it's just going to be your car is going to
be turning left.
Speaker 6 (10:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
So that's all they I mean, not all they do,
you know, offence of the NASCAR fans out there. But yeah,
essentially it is a sport in which you go straight
and turn left.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yes, so Yokoi tapped into that. It was vastly less expensive,
you know, like a quarter of the cost of a
remote control racing car that had the full set of features.
Koy sort of democratized this technology, but at the same
time created something that was very profitable for Nintendo. So
it's not like he was, you know, some great man
(11:09):
of the people or something. He was a businessman. He
was making money for his employer, but doing it in
a way that opened up the field for the biggest
audience possible. And you know, using limited technology, using something
that seems underwhelming on the face of it, but still
ultimately it's functional and fun.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And this speaks to a philosophy that gumpe Ukoy had
which is still courts to Nintendo today. His phrase was
kut atajijitsu no siejeskal, which if you translate it literally
is something like lateral thinking with withered technology, or another
way to put it might be something like taking mature
technology and thinking sideways.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
The idea is that you take something that is not
cutting edge tech that is not necessarily intuitive like the
new hot thing. It's been around for a while, and
that kind of works to its advantage. Find new applications
for this old technology, this old gadget or gimmick or
(12:13):
CPU or whatever, and create fun out of that, to
create something that one kind of gives kids and consumers
a fresh take on something that might be sort of
familiar and that they take for granted. But also because
this technology is old and well established, it's usually created
(12:37):
at scale, and so it's readily available as a component.
So you know, you can basically put together off the
shelf parts and very inexpensively come up with something that
can be created in mass manufacturing and distributed and be
very profitable. So it's one part kind of pure mad
(12:59):
cap and vence and one part business practicality. And eventually,
once Nintendo kind of went all in on video games,
they brought him in and said, please apply that creativity
to video games. And so you saw things like game
and Watch, and you saw things like game.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Boy, and this concept is still being referenced by Nintendo.
When one of the developers for the switch to was
asked about how the new JOYCN could be used as mice.
This is what he had to say, implementing mouse control
that's widely used nowadays in the Joycon controllers, isn't that costly?
And I think that's exactly what Lateral thinking of whither
(13:38):
technology is all about. Nintendo is still citing this philosophy
decades after Goompey entered the company, but we still haven't
talked about the games. How did goompe Eucoi's philosophy lead
to Nintendo's biggest early video game hits? That's after the
break felt the nineteen seventies, Goompey, a coy came up
(14:09):
with tons of toys for Nintendo, and they were all
pretty quirky. There was a puzzle game, There was an
extendable periscope. He made this thing called the Love Tester,
which supposedly measure your compatibility with a romantic partner, but
really just boys would buy it so they could get
girls to hold their hands. Goope had even started making
games for arcades. But the thing that really brought Nintendo
(14:32):
into some serious cash was this right here.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Game, what game? What game? What game?
Speaker 1 (14:53):
If you play Smash Brothers, you might have recognized the
name there game and watch the game and Watch came
out in Night and this was Nintendo and goompe Ucoy's
first real video game hit, so right.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
From the gate when those debuted in nineteen eighty with Ball,
a very simple juggling game where you have a guy
with you know, arms, and you just have to like
keep balls in the air. That's sold I want to
say half a million a million units. It became a
worldwide hit.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Ball is as simple as it sounds, and it was
the game that first came out with Game and Watch.
And again, if you play Smash Brothers, that's the character
you play as. And you could buy different Game and
Watch games and they were all equally simple. There was Ball,
there was a game where you dodge falling objects. There
was a really simple version of Whack a Mole. But
Game and Watch wasn't just a gaming console. It was
(15:49):
also a literal watch.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
When it was in sort of a neutral mode, it
would switch over to like a display clock. You could
set an alarm on it. The time piece element was
sort of built in from the start because the idea
behind Game and Watch was taking the fundamental technology the
powered the brand new LCD wristwatches that were kind of
making their rounds from Cassio and other companies and taking
(16:16):
that screen technology and approaching it a different way to
create entertainment out of it.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
So how did Ukoy come up with this thing? This
is where we start getting into the era where Ukoy
was starting to become something of a legend. So there
are a few stories about this. The most popular one
is that he got the idea from seeing businessmen on
the train absent mindedly playing with their calculators, and he
decided to make a product out of this. Maybe there
(16:45):
is some truth to that, and it is a nice story, but.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
I think that's probably somewhat apocryphal. Most likely what happened
was before Game and Watch came out. Milton Bradley created
a game system portable game system called Microvision that was
in nineteen seventy nine, and Nintendo's designers and developers have
referenced Microvision when talking about the Game Boy, and that
(17:13):
you know, game Boy was ten years after Microvision came out.
But that system was big and unwieldy and kind of
a weird piece of tech. It had like a bowling
game that barely resembles bowling. It had a casino game
that barely resembles a slot machine, So that definitely caught
a Nintendo's eye, and I think what happened was, you know,
(17:34):
they said, we've got to do something like this, and
they looked at, you know, the technology that they saw
in LCD wristwatches and said, oh, okay, like we could
do something along those lines. We could take that technology
and approach the idea of video game displays differently than
the standard pixel grit. What they did was they just
(17:58):
silk screened onto an old screen and created little characters,
very detailed characters and images that are pre built into
the screen light up. It was built around I believe
sharp LCD technology and they were mass manufacturing millions and
millions of these screens. So they took something that was
a prevailing trend at the time but used in one way,
(18:21):
and said what if we use this a different way?
And it was a huge hit, made them tons of money.
These were hits in Japan, but also in the US,
but also in Europe and also in the Middle East
and you know, parts of East Asia and Africa, like anywhere,
you know, anywhere people bought consumer products and enjoyed entertainment.
(18:44):
They could buy a game.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
And watch It makes sense because these were such simple
games that they didn't need translation or even a manual.
Just pick it up and you immediately know how to play.
Just recently, the Video Game History Foundation found what is
probably Nintendo's first EVA commercial in the USA in nineteen eighty.
They weren't big enough to distribute their products internationally by
(19:05):
themselves yet, so some other company did it and called
it time Out. But other than that label, this is
definitely the game and watch.
Speaker 6 (19:14):
Jah Ying gave you falling notches, take time out. Tennis
gave you tennis elbow, take time out. Then you electronic
spot this timeout games called toss Up. It plays an
easy game and a hard game. It recauds your highest
score and even tells time plus.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Yeah again like using low power, inexpensive, easily accessible technology,
and a really clever way to create great play value
and fun.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
And this is where the directional pad came from. Also right, yes,
the Donkey Kong game and Watch. When they sat down
to adapt Donkey Kong into game and watch forum, they
created the crosspad. The crosspad, also known as the direction
or the d pad, basically think of the part of
the controller that you use to make Mario walk left
(20:06):
or right crosspads are so ubiquitous now that it might
seem like they've been around forever, But back in the
seventies and even into the eighties, arcade games or home
console games would use joysticks or left or right buttons,
or switches or even circular dials to move. Pretty often,
playing a new game also meant having to learn a
brand new interface just to make your character move left
(20:29):
or right. It was Nintendo's Game and Watch that first
introduced the crosspad.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
That was this moment that changed everything for video games.
The crosspad came from Game and Watch and became an
integral part of not only their system, but so many
other systems we have.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Basically every single system after that is used some version
from I mean Super Nintendo, you know, PlayStation, all the segasystems,
all the Microsoft systems to Xbox, everything has used some
version of that an original directional crosspad. Video games were
starting to make serious money for Nintendo. Donkey Kong hit
arcades in nineteen eighty one and that was a massive hit,
(21:10):
And in nineteen eighty three they put out their first
home console. In Japan, it was called the Famicom. Here
in the States it was the Nintendo Entertainment System, and
we got it in late eighty five early nineteen eighty six.
But this whole time they were still making and selling
game and watch units. Other companies were starting to copy
their designs, which Yukoi himself didn't really mind, but of course,
(21:33):
the president of Nintendo needed another hit product. By this point,
Yukoi was the head of his own R and D
department with a team of engineers working under him, and
in nineteen eighty nine, this department created a new handheld
gaming device, the game Boy, and this is probably the
most famous expression of goompey Ocoy's philosophy of sideways thinking
(21:56):
using old technology for a new purpose.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
At the heart of the game Boy, you have a
Z eighty processor, and those have been around since the seventies.
A lot of the early computers used those early game consoles,
like the Calico Vision SAG SG one thousand. But by
the time Game Boy came out, you know, the SG
one thousand line Master system was on its way out
(22:20):
like that, that technology was being deprecated, and Nintendo went
with that because there were hundreds of millions of Z
eighty's in the world, like they were cheapest chips. And
it was functional. It was capable, not super powerful, not
cutting edge in any way, but it did the job.
It was a proven piece of technology for video games,
(22:42):
so it was very easy to make games for game Boy.
But you know, the thing that people always go back
to with game Boy is that the screen was garbage. Yes,
it really seems like they went out of their way
to find the worst screens possible, but they were cheap,
they were very inexpensive, and so game Boy worked out
for them very popular.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Just to back up here, at the time, game Boy
on paper probably sounded like an incredibly bad idea. I mean,
it's easy to look back now in hindsight and say, well,
hey man, that was back in nineteen eighty nine. Cut
them some slack. It was gonna be a little bit primitive.
But no, this thing was garbage even by nineteen eighty
(23:23):
nine standards. And when it was first being released, there
were reviewers who reviewed it very harshly, saying that the
hardware was primitive and the screen looked bad, and they
were correct. But then the thing actually hits the market
and it turns out hardware specs don't actually matter. It's
all about the games and how you put it together.
(23:45):
The obvious early highlight would be Tetris. This game was
pushing three million units sold within months, and it was
also one of the first things to help solidify video
games is not just for little kids, but something that
adults could also pick up and play. I could list
other hits or high lights like Kirby or the game
Boy Camera or Pokemon definitely, But maybe the most impressive
(24:08):
thing here is that the game Boy came out again
in nineteen eighty nine, and Nintendo put out their final
game Boy game in nineteen ninety nine. But that's only
if you only count the game Boy itself. If you're
also willing to count the game Boy Color, which is
mostly compatible with the original. The US got its final
game in late two thousand and two. That's thirteen years
(24:31):
of complete market domination in an era when game systems
usually got replaced after just a few years.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Game Boy was the best selling game system of the
twentieth century. Like it outsold any acid outsold PlayStation, and
nothing came close to the numbers that game Boy did.
Game Boy was a solid platform that had technology that
was just fairly good enough. But again, you know, it
drew very little power. The Atari Links, the Sega game Gear,
(25:02):
Turbo Express. We're all kind of competing at the same time,
and all of those had much greater power, full color screens, backlighting,
and those things would chew through four to six double
A batteries and like an hour and a half two hours.
Game Boy could run on four double a's for about
twenty hours. Yeah, and it's got your favorite guys like
(25:26):
Mario and Link and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Goombay Okoy left Nintendo in nineteen ninety six to start
his own company. From now on, he'd be a competitor,
which probably made Nintendo a little nervous. It definitely made
investors nervous because when word got out that goombay Okoy
was leaving, Nintendo's stock fell so hard, so fast that
the Tokyo Stock Exchange had to stop trading for a while.
(25:53):
But that situation didn't last long. The very next year,
Yukoi was riding as a passenger in a car with
a front The car we're ended someone and u Koi
got out to look at the damage. Just then another
car hit both of them. The friend was injured, but
your Koi was killed. A lot of the higher ups
(26:16):
in Nintendo now worked personally with Ukoi in the past.
Shigero Miyamoto, who again is the guy who created Zelda
and Mario, sometimes talks about him in interviews, but even
if it's not being mentioned directly, Yukoi's philosophy is something
that Nintendo always comes back to, especially when things don't
go well.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
I mean, they have had their moments where it has
felt like they have chased the powerhouse systems. You know,
I'd argue that maybe we you felt a little bit
like that, although we was doing some interesting things as well,
but you know, GameCube maybe a little bit like that.
It seemed like they kind of felt like, all right,
this Xbox things on the market, we got to look
(26:59):
like the Xbox, right.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
I feel like when Nintendo has chased power and tried
to be at the cutting edge of the industry, they've
they've found diminishing returns on that. The Super as was
very powerful, and it sold nowhere near as well as
the NES. The N sixty four was cutting edge. They
made a big deal about you know, real time toy
(27:22):
story and Jurassic Park graphics, and that sold even more poorly,
especially in Japan. GameCube really kind of bottomed out and
that was that was them trying to play in the
same arena as Xbox and PlayStation two, and that was
you know, kind of their I think, come to Jesus moment.
If it hadn't been for the game Boy line, they
(27:43):
would have been lost with the GameCube. So I think that,
you know, that was the moment where they stopped and said,
we need to recalibrate and stop chasing power because we
can't keep up with the competition. We can't stay at
the cutting edge. It's just not going to work for us.
And so, you know, then you get the DS and
you get the Wii, which took existing technologies and applied
(28:05):
them in really novel, interesting and intuitive ways, and those
were their best selling systems ever. And they kind of
touch it with that again with WEU trying to create
something that was you know, kind of on par with
PS three, and it was a bad idea, so they
kind of reversed course and went back with Switch, and
(28:26):
you know, unsurprisingly, it's been hugely successful because it really
played to Nintendo's poor competency, which is working with slightly
less powerful technology but doing interesting and appealing things with it.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
So it's kind of like every time they chase power,
you know, they kind of veer off course and really
doesn't work well for them. When they come back and
apply the kind of stuff that gumpe Yukoi was going for,
they started to get back on track in terms of
sales exactly. So how how exactly did goompe Accoy's influence
(29:02):
feed directly into the Switch and now the Switch too.
That's after the break. So we mentioned this before, but
before the first Switch came out in twenty seventeen, Nintendo
(29:25):
had a big flop with the WIU. This was their
successor to the we It did not do well at all,
but they took some lessons from that to the Switch.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
The WUT conceptually was a bad idea. What also happened
Nintendo was, despite being technologically generation behind, their teams could
not support building parallel games, which is like they were
making games for the their handheld platforms and for their
console platforms.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
That's because at the time they had their handheld successor
to the Game Boy, the three DS, and the WIU
on the market at the same time. Again, my former
colleague Patrick Klippick.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
Part of what happens with the Switch is what if
everything we do we don't have a handheld track and
a console track. It's just one and that allows us
to consolidate our expertise, our engineering, our design. But it
also means like there's not something to save you, right,
like if the weu underperforms, if the game Uwan performs, well,
(30:29):
don't worry. The handheld business is picking up the slack.
If the switch didn't work out, there was nothing to
pick up the slack. And there's every reason to wonder
what would Nintendo be if the switch hadn't taken off
for whatever reason. But obviously the sort of capture lightning
in a bottle that goes hand in hand with Breath
of the Wild not just being like a good or
a great game, but like a once in a lifetime,
(30:52):
like once in a generation style game that like really
hits the masses.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
And the switch is an another great example of your
COIs philosophy and influence.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
The switch is just fascinating because the original switch is
based on an Nvidia mobile phone chip from ten plus
years ago, Like it's remarkable what Nintendo was able to
get out of it. And then a couple of years
in COVID happens and the explosion and interest in video games.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
The Switch ended up being a smash hit and it
really took off in twenty twenty during lockdown.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
People finding stuff to do at home, the sort of
serendipitous launch of animal Crossing, which they couldn't have predicted,
that just sort of happened alongside, you know, lockdowns and
people looking for stuff to do. And it's like they
had a a platform that could be played like on
TV or around the house, and then launched a social
game at a time people were desperate for any sort
(31:49):
of social activity and then the Switch like just explodes
like during that period. It just makes for a very
unique set of circumstances for the company.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
You've played the switch to? What's it like? What do
you think?
Speaker 4 (32:03):
Have you played a switch?
Speaker 1 (32:04):
I have played the Switch?
Speaker 4 (32:06):
So you have played a switch to? Okay, which I think?
You know, Wait, does that mean you're not impressed? I
don't think they're trying to impress anybody. I think I
think the switch too is Nintendo. Do people really like
the Switch? Do they really want us to reinvent the Wheel?
(32:27):
And I think what they have said is like their
bet is that people would just like a nicer switch,
and that's what the Switch to is it is a
nicer switch, better graphics, more capable, nicer joy cons a
better kind of fit and finish. And then I think
from a Nintendo's perspective, like, why did they do the
(32:47):
Wii well, the GameCube felt like they ran into a
wall and had to do something different. Why did they
do the switch well, the we you ran into a
wall and they had to do something different. There's really
no indications from the runaway success of the switch that
they should do something fundamentally different. So I think from
their perspective, a switch like a more powerful switch, like
(33:09):
we see this with phones with tablets. Is the switch
now just a ubiquitous device in a lot of people's
lives where hey, like every five ten years or whenever
it breaks or I hand, I hand one off to
my kid, I go get the new one, And is
the switch going to be like that device like that
for people? The switch to is kind of the real
(33:29):
test of where does it fit in people's lives?
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Do you see personally any connection between say, the switch
to and goompe Ocoid's philosophy or legacy.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I mean in the sense that switch to is the
successor to switch and really doesn't change much about the
way the switch is built, where you've got the kind
of self contained device that is a screen and a
processor and RAM and a cartlot and then you have
the controllers that can be removed and swapped around, and
it plugs into a port to a DOC to connect
(34:09):
to a TV. I think Yokoya would look at the
switch and say, you know, this is this is it?
Like this is great stuff right here. I do think
it is very true to Gunpay yokoy Is design concepts
and the thinking that he brought to Nintendo's products, not
just their games, but many of their products. It does
(34:29):
make me happy to see his kind of spirit live
on and continue through this.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
I want to give a big shout out to our
first guest, Patrick Klippik. He's got a right up on
crossplay dot substack dot com where he's laying out all
the games he's looking forward to on the switch too.
So if you're thinking about getting one, and you know,
if the player two or player three in your life
just so happens to be a kid, that might be
something you want to check out. And also big shout
(35:04):
out to Jeremy Perish if you're interested at all in
video game and history seriously, his YouTube channel is mandatory watching.
And also, speaking of videos, right as we were putting
this together, the YouTube channel did you know Gaming dropped
almost an hour long episode on Goompayakoy. What can I say?
Great minds think alike. So if you're interested in knowing
(35:26):
more specifically just about goompay Acoy's life story, because honestly,
there isn't a whole lot of info about him in English,
that's a great video to check out. Also, and once again,
all those links are in the show notes. Lastly, also
a big shout out to you the listener for indulging
me as I basically just go full fanboy about Nintendo,
(35:46):
so I appreciate that also. But anyway, let me know
what you think. You can hit us up at kill
Switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC with any thoughts. You could
also hit me directly at dex digi that's d e
x d I g I, either on Instagram or Blue
Sky if that's more your thing. And if you like
this episode, leave us a review because it really helps
(36:07):
people find the show and that in turn helps us
keep doing our thing. Kill Switch is hosted by me
Dexter Thomas. It's produced by Shena Ozaki, darl Of Potts
and Kate Osborne. The theme song is written by me
and Kyle Murdoch, and Kyle also mixes a show from Kaleidoscope.
Our executive producers are Ozwa Washin, Mangesh Hotigadur and Kate Osborne.
(36:30):
From iHeart, our executive producers are Katrina Norvil and Nikki E.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
Tour.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
If you've got any game recommendations, send it to me,
but until then we'll catch you on the next one.
kill switch News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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