#iwata asks

It has been so many years since those were being actively published that I can't really think of very many out of context like this.

I suppose the one that crosses my mind the most was Iwata revealing how he basically rescued Pokemon and Earthbound. In particular was the case of Pokemon, which was so unoptimized and buggy that after Iwata was done with it, Gold and Silver had enough space to basically fit the entire first game worth of data along side all the data for G&S. Iwata was responsible for that gen's entire post game.

Something similar was true for Earthbound, which, if I recall, was nearly canceled because the game was such a broken mess internally. Iwata swooped in and helped rebuild the game basically from scratch in under a year.

Thinking about it now, maybe those weren't from Iwata Asks. Or maybe they were just from the little sidebars that would come out during the course of talking about other games. Like I said, it's been a while since he died, and even longer since the last one was published.

Glancing at the site, the one for Splatoon jumps out in my mind. They were particularly forthcoming with that one, showing early prototypes and kind of demystifying the process of how they arrived at the final game.

I think the Super Mario Galaxy 2 one was also where they revealed it was planned as DLC for the first game, but grew to be so large that it became its own, separate game. That's an interesting fact, and every time I think about it, I think of how, internally in the game's own header data, it is referred to as "Super Mario Galaxy MORE".

Did you know Star Fox Zero honors Satoru Iwata on its final screen? Iwata passed away during Star Fox Zero's development, so after the credits roll, the game is dedicated to the devs' fallen wingman.

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