About Gunpei Yokoi
Gunpei Yokoi, sometimes transliterated as Gumpei Yokoi, was a Japanese toy maker and video game designer. As a long-time Nintendo employee, he was best known as the original designer of several notable Nintendo products, including the Ultra Hand toy, the Game & Watch and Game Boy handheld game systems, as well as the producer of a few critically acclaimed franchises such as Metroid and Kid Icarus. The modern Nintendo philosophy of focusing on interactive gameplay over cutting-edge technology was espoused by Yokoi. In 1981, Yamauchi appointed Yokoi to supervise Donkey Kong, an arcade game created by Shigeru Miyamoto. He worked on toys until the company decided to make video games in 1974, when he became one of its first game designers, only preceded by Genyo Takeda. Leaving with several of his subordinates to form a new company called Koto, Yokoi led the development of the Bandai WonderSwan handheld game console.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.