There's a lot of crazy in here, but I can relate in a way.

When I was young (a teenager), I really wanted to be a video game designer. Well, more than a designer, I wanted to be a full on creator, a rock star like Sid Meier or John Carmack.

So I started making a game engine. I didn't really know exactly what I was making, I just had various ideas that I was collecting and coming up with and attaching to this game engine. At first it was pretty impressive, I had written a 3d first person shooter game engine from scratch at like 13 years old. I had made all the art myself (badly). I made a few demos for competitions, even won some of them and got some prizes. At a certain point though, I was just too attached to all this work I had put into this game engine, but I had no idea what I really wanted to make with it, because I honestly kind of sucked at game design and writing and never really put in the time to learn those disciplines. So I became weirdly attached to my "game", even though it wasn't really much of anything concrete. And realistically my game engine was "impressive for a 14 year old" but not impressive overall.

Luckily, I didn't fall into crazy mental illness like this guy. At some point after tinkering with it for a few years I realized it was a lost cause because I didn't know what to do with it.

The trap a lot of creatives or potential-creatives fall into is falling in love with a project that isn't going anywhere. If you want to be a creative person, you need to know how to spin a lot of plates and let go of something if it has just run out of steam. I think in Bob's case, it's clear that this project was always attached to his identity rather than simply being a project. (I mean, it's in the name). That's really dangerous. You aren't your work. You should never let a project, an art piece, even a company, become your identity.

Bob locking himself in a room as a protest is obviously crazy; but I think in a way it becomes more understandable when you realize that this wasn't just a project to him, it was his entire identity. Nintendo was essentially denying him what he thought to be his existence. That's totally bananas on his part, but I think that covers why someone would do something like that.