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