PokeCat (2013-11-25 18:25:36)

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Poke'Cat
Mr. Harrison
Sophomore English Honors
November 11, 2013
Hiroshi Yamauchi: The Man Who Changed Nintendo
Creativity is strange in many ways. Kurt Vonnegut once said, “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down”(Vonnegut). Many developers of companies often try to find those with the most creative minds to create the best products. The Nintendo Wii was one of the most creative and innovative products ever created in the video game industry. Although Hiroshi Yamauchi started out by taking over his great grandfather's playing card business, he transformed it into one of the most successful video game companies in modern society through his unusual faith in those with creative minds.
Once Hiroshi was in business, he fired several of the managers and replaced them with new faces. Before he would go into business though, he had his grandfather fire the only other family member at Nintendo, his cousin. Hiroshi was ready for change, and brought it to Nintendo. He even changed the name, along with the main focus. He wanted Nintendo to be a company based purely on entertainment. With this thought in mind, he sought out those who were creative enough to make interesting products that Nintendo could sell.
Hiroshi had some pretty far out ideas when he took over Nintendo. Not only did Hiroshi seek out creative minds, he also had a very creative mind of his own. He once tried to sell a type of instant rice, which failed miserably. He even tried to run a taxi business, which went well for awhile, but eventually failed. One of Hiroshi’s more far out ideas were places called “Love Hotels”. It was basically a place for the japanese to go to have a night to remember. A lot of these ideas were thought of as completely crazy and outrageous. He eventually lost all these ideas to failure and had others come up with creative ideas that would later be a success.
Hiroshi always wanted creative people at Nintendo. A young inventor named Gunpei Yokoi came to Nintendo in 1995 in search of a job. He was hired as a janitor, and was called to Hiroshi’s office a year later in 1996. Hiroshi saw Yokoi’s potential, and told him to create a product for the holiday season. Hiroshi’s faith in Yokoi was justified, as Yokoi came up with the “Ultra Hand”, a retractable hand that could grab objects far away from the user of the product. After being released in 1996, the company sold 1.2 million Ultra Hands in Japan. Hiroshi’s faith in Yokoi was completely correct, and ended up in big success for Nintendo. As a result, Yokoi was put in charge of R & D 1 (Research and Development Team 1) which would, “go down in history for producing some of the best toys and games in Nintendo’s repertoire” (Firestone 27).
Hiroshi was often looking for new and interesting technology to use for new products. One day, in the early 1970’s, a man from Sharp came to sell solar cell products. Solar cells are cells that convert light into electricity. The man, named Masayuki Uemura, talked to Yokoi and discussed how the cells could be used in gaming. a short time later, Hiroshi had hired Uemura, which later came to the idea of how Nintendo could use these cells. It was suggested that they use it for a shooting game. Thus came the creation of the Nintendo Beam Gun. Hiroshi knew his faith in Uemura would pay off. Hiroshi used to tell people, “I have a way to tell if people can be creative, just by the way they present themselves” (Watson).
Hiroshi left his faith in Yokoi once again. He told Yokoi, “Throw away all your old ideas in order to come up with something new. We must look in different directions” (Firestone 39). Yokoi did just that. He even found that he could use the technologies from pocket calculators for video games. In 1980, Hiroshi’s wishes were achieved. Yokoi had created the Game & Watch system. A product that used older and existing technologies, but was still entirely new and could be mass produced inexpensively. the product was no bigger than a pocket calculator and allowed players to kill a little time without wasting away at a video game screen. The system only had five buttons. a button for Game A, one for Game B, one for the time, and two to control the actual game.
Hiroshi often looked for ways to expand and better shape Nintendo in order to share his creativity with the world. Hiroshi wanted a man from the family to run a headquarters in another country. His daughter, who had a husband that worked for Arakawa Textiles, was against her husband going into the business, but Hiroshi has his sights set on Minoru (Mino). Mino was often away from home for long periods of time, and Hiroshi finally sat his son-in-law down and had a talk with him. He told Mino he should leave his current line of work and come work for him at Nintendo, “setting up a new operation in Malaysia” (Firestone 47). Hiroshi’s daughter, Yoko, was passionately against the idea. Hiroshi eventually trashed the Malaysia idea, but still wanted to involve Mino in the business. It was in the late 1970’s when Hiroshi desperately wanted to expand to the US. He was 100% convinced that Mino was the perfect man to run the operations he planned in the US. Though Yoko was still against it, Hiroshi continued to ask Mino if he wanted the offer until he accepted. In 1980, Yoko and Mino opened the very first Nintendo of America (NOA) office in Manhattan, New York. Though the America’s game industry was not at all good, NOA eventually picked up speed.
Hiroshi knew NOA really needed something that Americans would truly enjoy and he needed a very creative designer for it. An old family friend, Shigeru Miyamoto, fit the bill perfectly. He was very creative throughout his childhood, and loved the concept of cartoon based games. After awhile, he created a game called Donkey Kong using a gorilla that kidnapped an Italian carpenter’s girlfriend. The game was designed and sent to NOA, who had a tester play the game. He had to be dragged away from the game, it was so addicting. Once all the intro and names were translated from Japanese to English, it was found that the little carpenter’s name was Jumpman. The NOA staff thought it needed to be changed. Inspiration for a name struck Mino when his landlord came into the warehouse, which he had been renting at the time, and demanded his rent. After reassuring the man that he would get his rent, the landlord left, but his name stuck in Mino’s head. The landlord’s name was Mario Segale, and thus, Jumpman was transformed into Mario. The game was launched in a nearby tavern in 1981 and was pretty much an overnight success. Hiroshi’s faith had reigned true once again.
Hiroshi continued to leave his faith in all of his designers, and with good cause. His designers created many famous new systems, such as the Famicom, Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo 64, Gamecube, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS, Nintendo DS Lite, Nintendo DSi, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and the Nintendo WiiU, just to name a few. His unusual faith in the creativity of others allowed Nintendo to thrive and prosper in the video game industry. As Super Mario would say, "Life is a game, kid! It all depends on how you play” (Mario Quotes)!

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