RIP Satoru Iwata.

A truly great person. Will be hard for anyone to follow in this guy's footsteps.

Originally posted by Canas Renvall View Post

- Programmed Pokemon Stadium's battle system himself in a single week
- Created compression software so that GameFreak could fit the Kanto region into Pokemon Gold/Silver, which wouldn't have been possible otherwise

These two are even more insane when you take into account that;
- Stadium's battle system is basically a recreation of the ones from the GB games, which he basically had to reverse engineer for that (and he pretty much recreated Red/Green when they did their localized counter parts Red/Blue, rather than just forcefully cramming in the localized assets)
- Fitting Kanto into Gold/Silver was basically an afterthought spawned from the fact that they still have space available after he'd whipped together a compression routine for them so they could fit the main game itself on the targeted cartridge size.

Today's a sad day for gamers.

Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, died today at the age of 55 due to a growth in his bile duct. He had surgery to remove it last year, but it came back.

Iwata started out in the industry in the 80s working for HAL Laboratories where he became head of the studio. His many accomplishments include:

- Programming Earthbound himself
- Helped in creating the Kirby series
- Pitched the idea of Super Smash Bros to Nintendo for his friend Masahiro Sakurai
- Programmed Pokemon Stadium's battle system himself in a single week
- Created compression software so that GameFreak could fit the Kanto region into Pokemon Gold/Silver, which wouldn't have been possible otherwise
- Was the brainchild behind the DS, the Wii, the 3DS and the Wii U

His list of games he worked on is here: http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/Satoru_Iwata

Though Nintendo had some hardships lately, Iwata was a humble man. He voluntarily took a pay cut as an apology to the fans he felt he'd disappointed, and he was always open and transparent through the tough times. I learned to respect him a lot for that, it's far more than I've seen other heads of companies do. Iwata's had a huge impact on the industry in many ways.

Even Sony has tweeted their gratitude to Mr. Iwata: https://twitter.com/PlayStation/stat...12765849546752

Nintendo translates from Japanese as "leave luck to heaven". Well, heaven just got very, very lucky.

RIP, Mr. Iwata. Thank you for being such a large part of my gaming life.

"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer."
Satoru Iwata, 1959-2015

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