converted its headmounted goggle design into a stationary, heavy, precision steel-shielded, tabletop form factor conformant to the recommendation of the Schepens Eye Research Institute. According to David Sheff's book Game Over, the increasingly reticent Yokoi never actually intended for the increasingly downscaled console to be released in its final form. However, Nintendo pushed the Virtual Boy to market so that it could focus development resources on the Nintendo 64. 1995: Game Boy successor In 1995, the department started developing a successor to the Game Boy, under the code-name Atlantis. Despite its predecessors having a monochrome display, the R&D1 team had already experimented with color displays from as early as 1992. The Atlantis prototype consisted of an handheld with a 32-bit ARM7 CPU, a larger color display, and four face buttons. It was reported that the system was supposed to release in late 1996. Meanwhile, the department was also working on a revision of the Game Boy. The system would require fewer batteries, providing approximately 10 hours of gameplay, and was also equipped with a DC connector which could be used to power the system. The screen was also changed to a true black-and-white display, rather than the green-tinted monochrome display of the original Game Boy, and had an improved pixel response-time, mostly eliminating the ghosting effect. It finally released as the Game Boy Pocket on July 21, 1996, in Japan, on September 3 in North America, and in Europe during the following year. Although it had no power LED initially, it was soon added to later editions due public demand. Following the commercial success of the Game Boy Pocket, the Atlantis system was delayed by a year to late 1997. Nonetheless, the system was eventually cancelled due to concerns of it being too big, having a drastically decreased battery life (to approximately 1 hour, as LCD color displays required a back-light at the time), and being too expensive to manufacture. Although it was shelved, the project would later considerably speed up the development of the Game Boy Color in 1997 by the Nintendo Research & Engineering department. 1996-2003: Gunpei Yokoi's departure and hardware team spin-off On August 15, 1996, long-time department general manager, Gunpei Yokoi, left Nintendo to form his own company, Koto Laboratory. Despite speculation that he had left Nintendo due to the commercial failure of the Virtual Boy a year prior, Yokoi clarified that he'd long wished to