Yokoi was well aware of his engineering limitations. As one aficionado of game history put it, “He studied electronics at a time where the technology was evolving faster than the snow melts in sunlight.” Yokoi had no desire (or capability) to compete with electronics companies that were racing one another to invent some entirely new sliver of dazzling technology. Nor could Nintendo compete with Japan’s titans of traditional toys—Bandai, Epoch, and Takara—on their familiar turf. With that, and Drive Game, in mind, Yokoi embarked on an approach he called “lateral thinking with withered
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