#iwata'sday

Mr. Iwata had a passion for gaming back in 1978, when he got his first computer (Commodore Pet) & because a programmer with HAL in 1980 part-time, go full-time in 1982 after graduation.  He forged the relationship between HAL & Nintendo to make some great games.

While you can catch the life of Satoru Iwata & the achievements in the above video made by The Gaming Historian ( https://www.youtube.com/gaminghistorian/ ), here’s some key highlights & stuff that you may not know if you’re not up for watching the video (which is 37 minutes long Ken Burns-style documentary).

1) Iwata created Balloon Fight (NES)

The game was programmed entirely by Iwata... back when games only needed a handful of people to make them

2) Iwata taught Mario how to swim

I know this may be a bit of a stretch, but when development of Super Mario Bros. was in progress, they were having problems getting the swimming mechanics just right.  Nintendo recycled code from Balloon Fight for the underwater levels, which felt right.

Nintendo also used the code from the fish patrolling the waters in Balloon Fight for Big Bass in Super Mario Bros. 3

2) Iwata help localize the 1st Gen Pokémon (GBY) games to the US (& worldwide)

He did this to help free up resources for Game Freak to create the 2nd Gen titles.

3) Iwata was able to cram Kanto region into 2nd Gen Pokémon (GBC) games (Gold / Silver / Crystal)

The compression tools developed by Iwata made it possible while expanding the series into the Johto region... effectively doubling the world.

5) Iwata was able to port the battle system from the 1st Gen Pokémon games into Pokémon Stadium (N64) within 1 week.

Talk about being prolific in reading & understanding code WHILE being the president of HAL.

6) Assisted with Masahiro Sakurai with Super Smash Bros. (N64)

While this was originally a secret project within HAL for a fighting game as they didn’t have authorization to use Mario & other Nintendo characters within it.  They didn’t show the prototype to Nintendo (which utilized 4 characters) until they had the gameplay balanced.

From there, the series has been a smash hit with 4th title on the Wii U & 3DS

7) Iwata broke Earthbound (aka Mother 2) (SNES) out of development hell

Shigesato Itoi (creator of the Earthbound / Mother series) crew concerned about the development of Earthbound, he had Iwata review the game code.  Iwata created tools for APE (Itoi’s dev team) to redo the game from scratch (instead of fixing the existing code) & got the game released in under a year.

There’s probably some other noteworthy feats that Satoru Iwata did, but these are ones that stand out.  I’ll likely write another article noting more next year for what I’d like to call #Iwata’sDay as he was so prolific as a game programmer & as an executive who loved games.