Nintendo is trying to do for games what Osamu Tezuka did for manga.

[The Ghost of RubangB]

Khuutra said:

The Ghost of RubangB said:
Yokoi was Miyamoto's mentor, and responsible for helping him produce Donkey Kong, as well as leading his own team which made the Game Boy, the Game & Watch, the D-Pad, R.O.B., Super Mario Land, Balloon Fight, Metroid, Kid Icarus, and a laundry list of early Nintendo achievements that dwarfs anybody.

Miyamoto is Edison. Yokoi was Da Vinci.

The D-Pad was the most innovative controller revolution of the 1980s, as the analog stick was for the 1990s, and motion sensing and IR pointing are for the 2000s. But I'd argue that the D-Pad was the most important, because it was the one to finally replace the wonky joysticks of arcade machines and Ataris.

I think a more apt comparison would be Plato and Aristotle. Both are indispensable to gaming canon, but I think Miyamoto, though he came later and undoubtedly owed much to Yokoi, is ultimately more influential and important.

Ooh I like that one, but then who would be Socrates?

Maybe Yokoi could be Socrates and Miyamoto could be Plato?  Yokoi laid down the foundation, but we barely know anything about him and he never wrote anything down and there are only a few photos of him left, and most of his legacy was carried on by Miyamoto.

What I meant by my Edison/Da Vinci comparison was that Yokoi was more of a Renaissance artist in that he worked on hardware, software, and even building his own toys, while Miyamoto's focus was only on software.  And Yokoi's breakthroughs were in an earlier time when they couldn't have as much of an immediate cultural impact.  The kids run out in the streets yelling "Mario!  Mario!" instead of "D-Pad!  D-Pad!"  But Edison was pure evil so comparing him to Miyamoto is a bad joke.