Game Boy

In 1989, while the world looked skeptically at the idea of a serious portable video game, Gunpei Yokoi made a counterintuitive bet. Instead of chasing cutting-edge technology, he deliberately chose inferior hardware: a monochrome green screen without backlighting, a Sharp LR35902 processor at just 4.19 MHz (less powerful than the NES), and a boxy, bulky design that barely fit in a pocket.

The philosophy was called "Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology" — using mature, inexpensive technology creatively always beats the latest technical breakthrough. The unlit screen meant 30 hours of battery life with four AA batteries. Competitors — Atari Lynx with its color screen, Sega Game Gear with backlighting — lasted 3-4 hours. In a world where children had no power outlets during car trips, the Game Boy's 30 hours were unbeatable.

But the decisive move was different. Yokoi convinced Nintendo to include Tetris as the pack-in game instead of Super Mario Land. Tetris was universal: grandmothers, businessmen, children — everyone understood it in 10 seconds. The Game Boy wasn't a toy: it was the first portable digital entertainment device for everyone. Henk Rogers, who negotiated the Tetris license through a wild trip to Moscow during the Cold War, made the perfect marriage between game and hardware possible.

When the Game Boy seemed finished — technically surpassed by every competitor — Pokémon arrived in 1996. Red and Green (later Blue) sold 31 million copies in Japan alone and relaunched hardware sales like nobody predicted. The Game Boy, with its Pocket, Light and Color variants, sold a total of 118.69 million units. Gunpei Yokoi tragically died in a car accident in 1997, but his philosophy — simplicity, battery life, creativity — is the DNA of every portable Nintendo console through Switch.