Satoru Iwata Passes Away

Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, passed away on July 11th, 2015 the company said in an official statement released on July 12th.

Iwata became president of Nintendo in 2002, and has been a major part of many Nintendo staples, such as the Nintendo Wii, DS, and 3DS systems.

He will be missed.

 

[SuperAfroBoy]

He was an incredibly talented programmer.

Gamefreak was having trouble fitting Pokemon Gold/Silver onto the 2MB GBC cartridge, so Nintendo sent Iwata over to help. He was able to optimize the code so well that not only could they fit Gold/Silver into that 2MB, but they now had enough free space that they decided to add Kanto as well.

He's also the sole reason Super Smash Bros Melee released on time. The Melee team wasn't going to meet the release target date, so Iwata sat with the programmers for three weeks and reviewed, tested, and fixed all the code.

He also ported the original Pokemon battle logic / code from R/B to the N64 Pokemon Stadium. In a week.

He also saved the development of Earthbound by writing an entire scripting language for the game's dialogue boxes and cutscenes.