1/ About "Lateral Thinking Withered Technology" 「枯れた技術の水平思考」

Gunpei Yokoi, one of the main architects of Nintendo's original Game Boy, and many other hits like Donkey Kong, Mario Bros, etc -- I think this used to be one of his mottos. An interesting thing that Nintendo did was they meticulously understood that their way of competing with the market was not latest state of the art technology -- but rather to utilize mature (used to be cutting edge but now is now) technology - to do something fun, exciting and give an experience to the customer

There's a story about How Yokoi and his team was about to release the Game Boy, and some Nintendo engineer got concerned about a competitors product. Yokoi asked them, is the screen color? and they said yes (the original gameboy was monochrome) and he was like phew, that's great. They constrained themselves to use a "reliable" technology like monochrome displays at the time which cost significantly less - and had longer battery life

creating and destroying; built flying cars & autonomous vehicles, now building /faust, more here: /july, web: july.rocks

Gunpei Yokoi's approach highlights that innovation doesn't always mean adopting the latest tech. By focusing on user experience and leveraging what works reliably, Nintendo carved out a unique space, proving creativity often thrives through constraints, not just cutting-edge advancements.