How the Game Boy ᵃˡᵐᵒˢᵗ ruined Nintendo

The Game Boy was a low spec machine that changed gaming, so why was it so hard to develop? And how did it almost destroyed Nintendo from the inside?

#gameboy #nintendo

Sources for how LCD work and their history:

Terry Scheffer, Jürgen Nehring (1997). Supertwisted nematic (STN) liquid crystal displays. Annual Review of Materials Research.

E P Raynes. C M Waters (1987). Supertwisted nematic liquid crystal displays.

Hirohisa Kawamoto (2012). The History of Liquid-Crystal Display and Its Industry. 2012 Third IEEE HISTory of ELectro-technology CONference (HISTELCON)

Source for the historical bits:

History of Nintendo, Vol 4 by Florent Gorges

Source for the image of Uemura:

Credits:

3D animations by Windy.

Smash Intro by Dango

Social media:

Stock Footage from Getty

[bartzrt]

It's funny how a lot of adult businessmen probably didn't realize what a big deal the long battery life was. As a kid, I had to use my allowance to buy batteries. I was simply too poor for a Game Gear!

[LowSpecGamer]

Since I have found no new games that I can make videos about and all hardware is almost impossible to hard I decided to take the opportunity to look a bit into the past and explore the low spec machine that started my obsession and thought me that higher specs are not always better. Hope you enjoy this new series.

[ruxcooking]

You just have to do a similar video about Nintendo's meetings with Sony, Phillips and every other crazy move that led to the Playstation and N64

[Berutoron]

A fantastic video. Massive, massive props to you for basing this on Florent Gorges's book and for reaching out to him. Because his Nintendo books are French and the initial English translation was, as I understand, kinda bad, Gorges's work doesn't get nearly the amount exposure and recognition it deserves. Most documentaries and books on the subject of Nintendo's history pull from the same 2 or 3 American sources that I'm sure are fine in their own right, but Gorge's investigative work goes much further beyond, and uncovered many stories and details that were previously completely unknown. Not to mention that it helps dispel a number of myths, such as the notion that Gunpei Yokoi was some kind of infallible humble mastermind who spearheaded the Game Boy, when, as Gorge and you pointed out, it was actually Satoru Okada's pet project - if we have to attribute it to a single person, anyway.

Also, man, those production values. From the editing to the drawings to the footage to the 3D animations to even having the official Smash Bros. announcer voice a line for you. If this is your first short at this kind of work, you set the bar really high. Great work.

[zaidlacksalastname]

Guess Alex is a HighspecDocumentarian now, and I couldn't be happier

[kalebm.]

Nintendo's facilitation of creativity is kinda what always draws me back to them. They are still a big company with big company problems, but you can sometimes just feel the passion and intent behind their more unconventional and unique decisions.

[breedlove]

It's been a while since LGR has put out a Tech Tales video. Glad Alex is filling in the void

[inoppi]

Nintendo realized that going with Citizen would be going behind the back of their established business partner Sharp and had to take a hit one way or the other preferring to keep the established relationship.

Feels very similar to how Nintendo runs it's own distribution almost everywhere but even after establishing Nintendo of Europe they still uses Bergsala for their Northern Europe distribution to this very day since Bergsala has been their Nordic distribution partner all the way back to Game and Watch days.

And they say there's no honor in business...

[siniorgolazo]

"Uh... like pixels? Like, every screen you have ever used?"
*Laughs in Vectrex

[leonbabic]

Nowadays, it's possible for the DMG to achieve even longer battery life. 14 hours was with alkaline cells from the 80s. I recently started a playthrough of Pokémon Blue with a fresh set of cheap alkaline batteries, and they lasted about 30 hours.

Now I need to test if it's possible to get 100 hours with non-rechargable lithium batteries.

[TheEngieTF]

Pretty much the Gameboy was everyone's childhood memory that almost destroyed it's own creators

[damikey]

The fact that nintendo has been around for 131 years is just mind blowing and insane.

[MarcoBayod_MB]

Wow, imagine if the idea of internal fights inside Nintendo were still to this day, Nintendo is alive thanks to the handheld market, thanks to Iwata's idea to merge console and handheld teams and to stop screwing with others partners companies.

Iwatas was an amazing human being.

Breath of the Wild is the best portable Zelda game ever, think about that sentence.

[BlueSatoshi]

27:24 Apparently one relatively common point of failure in these units is the audio. I can't remember exactly why, but some part of the board's prone to corroding to the point the system thinks the audio jack's in use and permanently mutes the speaker until that gets cleaned out.

[yhachpham]

"Taki is not the type to make things up"
Man literally made up an elaborated dummy concept to ghost on his partner corp.

[Heavenira]

Incredible presentation! This is on par with ModernVintageGamer's content.

[fattiger]

It's interesting that there was (and probably still are) so much infighting and corporate politics going on at Nintendo. Most videos present Nintendo's divisions as always in harmony. It's very interesting to see how Nintendo isn't that much different from any other company.

[Liam]

As a Frenchman, my immediate reaction was "hope this guy heard about Florent Gorges, or he'll be missing tons of super useful information". Was not disappointed.

[WrestlingWithGaming]

This was so, so good. The kind of quality you'd expect to see on Netflix or something.

[Bendaak]

Amazing video! I love how you captured the cut-throat corporate culture of 80's Japan. I was a Gear Gear kid back in the 90's and missed out on the original Gameboy. I guess you could say it was one of my life's regrets.