Over the next decade, Yokoi produced toy after toy for Nintendo: an electric batting machine, a mechanical driving game, an extendible periscope, a galvanometer repurposed into a carnival-esque “love tester” for couples, a walkie-talkie that used light beams instead of radio, a low-cost knock-off of Lego bricks, even a remote-controlled vacuum cleaner—the great-granddaddy of the Roomba. A few were modest hits, but many others were costly disappointments, one in particular nearly catastrophically so. Yokoi’s “Laser Clay” system, the precursor of every light-gun game to follow, was an ingenious but costly conversion kit that transformed bowling alleys into virtual skeet shooting ranges. Lavishly advertised in a campaign featuring action star Sonny Chiba, the first test locations attracted a huge amount of media coverage when they opened in the spring of 1973. Then an oil crisis hit. As citizens agitated over spiking prices and shortages eschewed entertainment in favor of rioting over toilet paper, the corporate customers Yamauchi had lined up cancelled in droves. Nintendo plunged five billion yen into the red. It would take years for Yamauchi to dig Nintendo out of the hole. If he could dig Nintendo out of the hole.