Gunpei Yokoi, designer of the original Game Boy, somewhat mysteriously left Nintendo in 1996. At the time, the popular theory was that his departure was related to the failure of the Virtual Boy. However, a recently surfaced interview that Yokoi gave before his death reveals that was not the case.

“The day before I retired [from Nintendo], The Nikkei did a big feature on me,” said Yokoi in an article published in the Japanese magazine, Bungeishunju. “In reality, I did not resign to ‘take responsibility for the Virtual Boy’s failure.'”

So why did Yokoi leave the company after he helped create some of their most iconic products? It seems that his decision was a simple matter of wanting to move to the next stage of his career.

“Since before that, I was thinking that when I turned 55, I wanted to become independent,” said Yokoi. “To put it another way, I came up with a lifetime of ideas and continued making playthings. To continue tweaking Nintendo’s corporate philosophy of ‘niche-type playthings’—that’s the only reason I resigned.”