R.I.P Satoru Iwata

[Dcubed]

I've had to leave to go off to work, but our 24 hour Kirby Livestream still has 5 hours left to go. Glen-i is currently having to man it alone, but hopefully should be joined by some company shortly. It's looking a bit tight for time, but I still think it might just barely be possible to get it all done within the remaining time; even if Glen-i is betting against me )

 

A huge thank you to everyone who tuned in to watch and donate (@kav82, @S\.C\.G as well, who kindly donated to Cancer Research UK, played through Kirby 64 alongside us till the wee hours of the morning and even put out a front page news article on the main site for us! You're a legend! : peace:

 

Anyway, feel free to tune in during the last 5 hours and share your favourite Nintendo/Iwata memories with us! (or even just skim through the live stream archive for some choice funny moments - there's plenty of failure throughout; I swear that I'm not normally THAT bad at Kirby's Adventure! :p ). There may also be some surprise game appearances that you would not expect

Edited July 14, 2015 by Dcubed

[BowserBasher]

Saddest death I've read about in a long time. So many tributes all over the internet from Nintendo fans to gaming fans in general.

This weeks MK8 League is going to be dedicated to him with us all racing as his Mii. I think as many of us should take part as possible.

 

RIP Iwata.

[Glen-i]

And we did it, 24 hours of Kirby games. And I'm ecstatic to say we broke our target quite comfortably. We raised £125 for Cancer Research UK.

 

I'm extremely exhausted, and I can't imagine how poor @Dcubed is feeling. But we managed to get almost every Kirby game we had planned played through. Not to 100% of course. That would be insane!

We had to give Kirby's Adventure Wii a miss and we did two worlds of Rainbow Paintbrush, but we played the rest of our games as far as we can go without going for all the optional stuff.

 

There are so many people to thank, but to be honest, and this is nothing personal, I am completely shattered. So I'm gonna pull a Milky Way Wishes ending, and just go to bed!

 

Thank you all!

[markderoos]

I don't know about you guys, but I'm still feeling massively sad about this.

Maybe should stop watching all those tributes on Youtube and gaming sites.

This one is so heartbreaking for example:

 

Really shows what impact Iwata and Nintendo have had on certain peoples youth or even lives.

[Fused King]

I don't know about you guys, but I'm still feeling massively sad about this.

Maybe should stop watching all those tributes on Youtube and gaming sites.

This one is so heartbreaking for example:

 

Really shows what impact Iwata and Nintendo have had on certain peoples youth or even lives.

 

I feel ya, man. Been doing the same thing.

Still thinking of a way to pay tribute...

[Ronnie]

First time I've been devastated by the passing of someone I didn't know. Still can't believe it.

[yesteryeargames]

I cannot get my head around this , it's really hit me hard I feel like i have lost a friend .

Edited July 14, 2015 by yesteryeargames

[Helmsly]

A poster at Neogaf translated this blog post by Yoot Saito:

 

I heard the tragic news about the passing of Nintendo’s president, Iwata-san… I can’t believe he's gone.

 

I first met Iwata-san back in 1996, so it was a time before you would typically see him in a suit. It was at HAL in Kofu. I remember that he always carried around a Mac (PowerBook), which was quite rare in the games industry. I think that formed a bit of connection between us—a feeling that we shared the same interests. It was around the year after that when I saw him with a G3 PowerBook, which even I had hesitated to buy, and I remember thinking, “this guy really loves Macs.”

 

It wasn’t until a bit later that I got a chance to work with him. It was around the time when Seaman was taking the world by storm and I was really busy working on planning for the sequel and taking interviews and such.

 

Iwata-san got in touch and asked if we could meet, and he even came all the way out to the apartment I was renting in Tokyo to see me.

 

As anyone who has met him probably understands, Iwata-san always has this aura about him that makes you feel happy and at ease. When you’re around him, you just feel good, even if you’re talking about work. That day, Iwata-san wasn’t in his typical casual garb, but had donned a blazer that he didn’t look quite comfortable in. He handed me his business card and awkwardly said, “this is what I’m up to these days.” I looked at the card and he had a title that named him as part of the Office of the President. He said that he had distanced himself from HAL (the company at which he got his start in the games industry) and was now helping out at Nintendo (HAL was under the umbrella of Nintendo).

 

“I’ve been given a special assignment to go out and get new types of games that haven’t been on Nintendo platforms before.” That’s the reason Iwata-san gave me for why he wanted to meet that day. He told me that Seaman was the kind of thing he was looking for. Thinking about it now, his role at this time was probably given to him as preparation for taking over management of Nintendo down the road, but it didn’t look like that was on his mind at all at the time.

 

To use a games industry expression, Seaman was a bit of a “guerilla-like” project even from the beginning, and no one, including myself, thought it would be a big hit, but I got a lot of good advice from Nintendo’s Miyamoto-san (and Tezuka-san), so I would show them the project even in the early planning stages and they would always look really intrigued by it. Before Seaman’s development on the Dreamcast began, I actually periodically had talks with Nintendo about making it for their platform. I think that background contributed to Iwata-san’s taking an interest in it. The game launched and did better than anyone could have imagined, constantly being sold out in stores. As a result, I got hit with the spotlight and received a lot of publicity. Iwata-san probably saw that and figured it would be a good idea to make friends with a game creator who could create weird games like Seaman.

 

- The DS and StreetPass

After that, I got the opportunity to do a lot of “experiments” with Nintendo. Most of them didn’t result in much, but we made a lot of prototypes of weird stuff. We even did things like make StreetPass-like technology on the GameBoy (not DS). I remember talking about things like, “Say you’re back in middle school. There’s a girl in your school whose name you don’t know. You always take the same train to school together. Can’t we come up with some good way to ask her out?”

 

This picture of Iwata-san is from that time (the board plugged in there is running a prototype program that we were working on).

 

When both the Nintendo DS and Wii were to be released, it was Iwata-san who made sure to quickly get in touch with me and demo the machines for me himself. He would always earnestly ask, “What kind of game would you make on this, Saito-san?” Iwata-san was always very courteous to everyone, and while he was a creator himself, he would never forget to show a great deal of respect to other creators.

 

When the DS came out, I went to Nintendo to receive a presentation for developers about the device. The developer support guy doing the presentation said, “That’s just about everything. Do you have any questions?” I asked him what he meant by “just about.” He replied, “There is one more new feature, but Iwata-san wanted to present that to you directly, so please wait here a moment.” I waited a bit and Iwata-san came down from the president’s office and tells me, “Saito-san, remember that StreetPass (it didn’t have this name at the time) feature we were working on? Well, it’s been implemented into the DS!” He then happily demonstrated the feature to me. This kind of thing isn’t something that most people get to experience. I consider myself extremely lucky to have been in the games industry at just the right time and to have had Iwata-san provide me with such an experience.

 

- The Wii Controller

There’s a bit on the Wiki that says I was the one to suggest putting a speaker on the controller after it was first announced. That's more or less true. Iwata-san, Miyamoto-san, and I were out at some yakiniku restaurant in Kyoto when I mentioned it. What is so incredible about this to me is that Iwata-san and Miyamoto-san went back and changed the design after my suggestion, even though they had already showed it off to the press, mockups included, and there had almost certainly been other people at Nintendo who internally proposed adding speakers to the controller before. I wasn’t even part of some big games publisher or anything—I was just an outsider with a big mouth.

 

This led into another really interesting story, but I’ll save that for another time.

 

- Seaman on the 3DS

When Iwata-san came to ask me to create Seaman for the 3DS, I like to think he was in the same frame of mind as when he first came to visit me at my apartment back in 1999. I did start working on the project, but things got really complicated and I eventually let go of it. Unfortunately that brought an end to our relationship, where I could just casually visit him in Kyoto and have fun exchanging new ideas. I felt like we needed some time before we could go back to the kind of creativity-filled relationship.

 

It was early last summer that I first heard about him taking some time off to recover from an unfortunate illness. I distinctly remember it, because I was actually sharing a taxi at the time with two super famous people: Yuji Horii-san of Dragon Quest fame and Takafumi Horie, otherwise known as Horiemon.

 

Iwata-san, when I later saw you appear before the press, I was really happy to see that you had recovered, but it looks like the gods aren’t that lenient… Tezuka-san (from Nintendo) suggested that I make an appointment to see you, but I couldn’t find the nerve to do so. Now, after all my hesitation, I’ve learned that we truly passed each other by, and I’ll never be able to see you again. I wish I had a StreetPass feature that could connect with heaven. I would run out and buy a DS with that feature right now just so I could send you my thanks. Yeah, I know that sounds a bit too convenient for me. When I left the Seaman project, I sent you a book and a letter. Whether you actually read them or not has been on my mind ever since. Also, I’m really sorry for being late with Odama, causing it to completely miss the window for it to be a success. There’s so much more I want to tell you, but I really don’t know what to do with myself after hearing about your sudden departure in the news.

 

Life is always just a succession of regrets.

 

Iwata-san, thank you for everything. I don’t typically look up to a lot of people, but I really respected you. I would always be thinking from afar just how amazing of a person you are.

It’s cliché to say this, but please rest in peace.

 

I’m still here, and although I almost lost hope in regards to being a creator and life in general, I think I want to challenge myself once more.

 

Iwata-san, thank you for so many things.

[Guy]

Great story and really a bit heartbreaking at the end. Thanks for sharing it, really reinforces how much of a positive force Iwata was in the industry.

[Fused King]

Last night it occurred to me we'll now never get to see Iwata announce a new F-Zero or Advance Wars or talk about the upcoming Zelda...

 

I was looking forward to his shenanigans if he were to ever promote a new F-Zero.

[Helmsly]

[Fused King]

 

Attending Iwata-san's wake to give my thanks and condolences. Miyamoto-san's eyes are red. It's also heavy rain in Kyoto.

 

(from Yasuyuki Honne, translated by Cheesemeister)

[Fused King]

I spoke to my friend who is in Kyoto right now and he said that a Typhoon will be hitting Kyoto tomorrow (Japan's today) on the day of Iwata's funeral.

 

I hope the ceremony will still go according to plan.

[Dcubed]

I spoke to my friend who is in Kyoto right now and he said that a Typhoon will be hitting Kyoto tomorrow (Japan's today) on the day of Iwata's funeral.

 

I hope the ceremony will still go according to plan.

 

It's a sad scene being set. It's almost like the weather is representitive of the mood surrounding Nintendo and the world around it

[Ramar]

RIP Iwata-san. The man was class, you could see it in the way he handled himself. The gaming industry is worse off without him, even if I don't agree with Nintendo's output at the minute.

[S.C.G]

A collectors tribute to Satoru Iwata

 

 

This is what my desk looked like over the past few days, I decided to assemble this while watching @Glen\-i and Hazel's inspiring 24 Hours of Kirby! So I set to work in amassing a good proportion of games and merchandise relating to Satoru Iwata in some way.

 

For bonus points can you spot all of the amiibo in this picture?

 

 

On the left we have EarthBound - previously featured in the N64 Appreciation thread where I shared my N64/SNES collection - along with Mother 1, 2 & 3 fan productions which I purchased mere days before knowing EarthBound Beginnings would be released. My original American copy of Pokémon Gold Version, Iwata will always have my respect for managing to fit the entire Johto AND Kanto regions onto that one sparkly coloured cartridge, truly amazing.

 

Mention to the Vegas Stakes display box which you can see part of as that was another Hal developed game, I'd always liked the box-art, the game is pretty decent too from what I recall, it's also something Nintendo wouldn't be able to get away with nowadays due to the strict ratings on anything with gambling; this is another reason why I love it because it's only at that point in time could a game quite like that exist.

 

 

Three Kirby games on the Game Boy all of which are cartridge only unfortunately - Block Ball, Pinball Land & Dream Land - indeed I don't actually own that many physical Kirby titles with the majority of them being digital though I'd like to buy more one day. Kirby Super Star NTSC version DS game which I picked up last time I was in Game for £5 or less? An absolute bargain as it's amazing in its own right plus if that wasn't enough it comes in a shiny box then there's Kirby Air Ride which I must play again after watching it being played the other day.

 

Notable mentions to Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush which I criminally haven't finished yet, the Kirby Plush which came with it and you may have noticed my Kirby's Avalanche NTSC display box which came in the same lot as the aforementioned Vegas Stakes plus a few others, I've kept them flat-packed and unused as the day they were purchased. I really like the artwork for Kirby's Avalanche though as it depicts a different style of Kirby also I find the placement of "For Display Only" across King DeDeDe amusing as I suppose it could almost be a strategic placement possibly... in any case it's a nice art style.

 

 

All of my Virtual Console Kirby games on the Wii U, I played through and completed two of them within the past 48 hours, I'm hoping there will be many more Kirby titles to be released yet or indeed further Hal titles for that matter as it would certainly be the right thing to do.

 

 

Some of my Virtual Console Kirby/Hal/Iwata programmed games on the 3DS, including Kirby & the Amazing Mirror ambassador title, Kirby's Adventure which I decided to blitz through last night, Kirby Triple Deluxe and of course Balloon Fight! Which I also purchased the theme of as well... on and then there's Revenge of the Gator which is a lesser known Hal title, I just love the fact that it got a VC release.

 

So there we go, I just wanted to share this and I hope that it might have been of some interest, I am of course still working on VC Weekly 347 but understandably it has taken me a bit longer than normal as I want to make it into a tribute edition especially as it features two Kirby games, so this is my tribute for now in addition to dedicating time to playing many of Iwata's games plus supporting others playing them as well. : peace:

 

Thank You for reading.

[sumo73]

In Japan there's a TV programme called Game Center CX where someone called Shinya Arino has to complete retro video games in a short time. In this episode he is joined by Iwata.

 

 

This video is in Japanese but it has English subtitles.

Edited July 16, 2015 by sumo73

[Ike]

In Japan there's a TV programme called GameCenter CX where someone called Shinya Arino has to complete retro video games in a short time. In this episode he is joined by Iwata.

 

 

This video is in Japanese but it has English subtitles.

 

Is that really how Iwata got his job, he walked in and asked for a job?

 

I'm a big fan of Game Centre CX so it was great watching Arino and Iwata together. I recommend people check out the series.

[Serebii]

The tributes outside NOA are getting larger

 

[Dcubed]

In Japan there's a TV programme called Game Center CX where someone called Shinya Arino has to complete retro video games in a short time. In this episode he is joined by Iwata.

 

 

This video is in Japanese but it has English subtitles.

 

Ahh, that's one of my favourite episodes. Brilliant stuff (and the reaction when Arink finally manages to get the orange balloons is priceless )

 

Oh and @S\.C\.G's collection is very very impressive! Wish I had a boxed copy of Earthbound! (Or even a Ness Amiibo for that matter )

[VsPhoenix]

[tweet]621906684307345408[/tweet]

[tweet]621916043896684544[/tweet]

[Helmsly]

[tweet]621952774184505344[/tweet]

[Kav]

It's still so heartbreaking

[Serebii]

http://www.gamespot.com/videos/the-point-understanding-iwatas-legacy/2300-6426061/

 

Fantastic tribute by Gamespot of all places. The end really resonated with me and how Nintendo is in general.

[Fused King]

http://www.gamespot.com/videos/the-point-understanding-iwatas-legacy/2300-6426061/

 

Fantastic tribute by Gamespot of all places. The end really resonated with me and how Nintendo is in general.

 

 

God damn, this man loved games, and wanted to share that love with so many people.

I admire him for at least trying to invent new ways of play and get more people huddled around the television and sharing laughs together.

Even though people might now have reverted back to their own personal screens (iPads, Smartphones), perhaps some people have come to love gaming through the Wii and are now gaming on the 3DSs, their PS4s or on their PCs with steam.

 

I distinctly remember Iwata referencing the book by Sherry Turkle called 'Alone Together' and his worries about people becoming alienated from one another through their own personal devices.

I still hope though that Nintendo will start to see the value more of online gaming and will understand that this has the power to build friendships all over the world and break cultural barriers.

MiiVerse is a great step in the right direction even though I barely use it

It's just a bit too vast for me and easy to get lost in. I like coming back to N-Europe, drink a nice brandy and discuss m' vidyagamez.

 

Just got this message from the centre where I go to meditate from time to time.

 

 

Iwata has reminded me of this once again.

Edited July 17, 2015 by Fused King