Satoru Iwata

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Satoru Iwata (2011)

Satoru Iwata ( Japanese 岩田 聡 Iwata Satoru ; born December 6, 1959 in Sapporo , † July 11, 2015 in Kyoto ) was a Japanese programmer , manager and the fourth president of the video game company Nintendo . After graduating, he worked at HAL Laboratory , a Nintendo-affiliated developer company that produced the Kirby , Adventures of Lolo and Super Smash Bros.is known. He later moved directly to Nintendo. Under his direction, two generations of Nintendo's home consoles , Wii and Wii U , as well as the handheld consoles Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS appeared .

Life

Iwata had an early interest in making video games. He enjoyed writing games for his electronic calculator during his spare time.

After finishing high school, Iwata enrolled at Tokyo Technical University . Iwata started out as a game programmer for HAL Laboratory.

During the 1980s Iwata was involved in many HAL projects. Outside of HAL, Iwata also worked independently for Nintendo. He was responsible for programming a number of games developed by Nintendo. Just a year after joining HAL, Iwata began coordinating software production and development for the various titles released by Nintendo.

While Satoru Iwata is often cited as the creator of the game Kirby, it was actually Masahiro Sakurai who developed the character Kirby as well as the basic model for the game. However, it was Iwata's participation in the project that ultimately produced the first title in the series. The game was designed for Nintendo's original Game Boy hand system. The intention was to create a game for beginners in which every player could reach every possible skill, level and ending. Kirby's Dream Land was released in Japan on April 27, 1992 and in America in August of the same year.

In 1993, Iwata was promoted to President of HAL and held that post until 2000.

In 2000, Satoru Iwata moved from HAL to Nintendo. He was the head of Nintendo's business planning department, where he was responsible for the global foundation of Nintendo's business planning. Iwata's experience within HAL over an 18-year period has been extremely valuable to Nintendo, particularly with the launch of its newest gaming system.

Satoru Iwata also played key roles in the development of some of Nintendo's most important games. During the GameCube era, Iwata's involvement in game development increased greatly. He played a role in the development of games like Super Mario Sunshine , Star Fox Adventures , Metroid Prime , Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem , Animal Crossing , The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and many others.

In 2002 Satoru Iwata was named president of Nintendo.

In 2013 he was named CEO of Nintendo of America.

In 2014, an examination revealed an early stage bile duct carcinoma . Because of the immediately initiated treatment, he first had to stop all activities. He died on July 11, 2015 as a result of the disease.

Web links

Commons : Satoru Iwata  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Published letter from Satoru Iwata about his illness , accessed July 15, 2014
  2. Notification of death , accessed on July 13, 2015