History of Nintendo card business reached its saturation point. Japanese households stopped buying playing cards, and the price of Nintendo stock fell from 900 yen to 60 yen. In 1965, Nintendo hired Gunpei Yokoi as a maintenance engineer for the assembly line. However, Yokoi soon became famous for much more than his ability to repair conveyor belts. Nintendo struggled to survive in the Japanese toy industry; it was still small at this point, and dominated by already well-established companies such as Bandai and Tomy. Because of the generally short product life cycle of toys, the company always had to come up with new
History of Nintendo products. This was the beginning of a major new era for Nintendo. In 1966, Yamauchi was observing a hanafuda factory. He noticed an extending arm, which was made by one of their maintenance engineers, Gunpei Yokoi, for his own amusement. Yamauchi ordered Yokoi to develop it as a proper product for the Christmas rush. Released as the "Ultra Hand", it would become one of Nintendo's earliest toy blockbusters, selling over a million units. Seeing that Yokoi had promise, Yamauchi pulled him off assembly line work. Yokoi was soon moved from maintenance duty to product development. Due to his electrical engineering