Satoru Iwata

“	On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer.	”
—Satoru Iwata, E3 2005

Satoru Iwata
Satoru Iwata at GDC 2011
Born		December 6, 1959
		Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan
Died		July 11, 2015 (age 55)
		Kyoto, Japan
Education		Computer Science at the Tokyo Institute of Technology
Occupation		President and CEO of Nintendo (2002–2015)
Spouse		Kayoko Iwata

Satoru Iwata (岩田 聡) was a programmer and the fourth President and CEO of Nintendo from 2002 to 2015. He had expressed his love and interest in video games ever since he was young and later majored in computer science at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Iwata joined HAL Laboratory in 1980 while attending the university. During his early years at HAL Laboratory, he worked as a programmer and collaborated closely with Nintendo. Notable titles he contributed to at this time include EarthBound and the Kirby series. Following the downturn and near-bankruptcy of the company, Iwata became the president of HAL Laboratory in 1993 at the insistence of Hiroshi Yamauchi, Nintendo's president at the time, and brought the company to financial stability. In the following years, he assisted in the development of the Pokémon series and with Masahiro Sakurai in making a prototype of a fighting game called Dragon King: The Fighting Game, which would eventually develop into and release as Super Smash Bros. Iwata joined Nintendo as the head of its corporate-planning division in 2000.

In June 2014, a tumor in his bile duct was discovered during a routine physical exam. It was successfully removed and Iwata returned to work in October of that year. However, the issue resurfaced in 2015, and Iwata died at the age of 55 from its complications on July 11. He was succeeded by Tatsumi Kimishima, who preceded Reggie Fils-Aimé as president of Nintendo of America and had previously served as Managing Director of Nintendo Co., Ltd.

In the Super Smash Bros. series

Iwata has played key roles in developing, advertising, and announcing various Super Smash Bros. titles.

For Super Smash Bros., he helped working on the game since its prototype phase, Dragon King: The Fighting Game. Masahiro Sakurai stated in a YouTube video that Iwata came up with the title of Super Smash Bros. (大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズ in Japanese), during a reunion for giving a title with both of them and Shigesato Itoi. Iwata explained that while very few of the characters in the game are canonically brothers, the title implied that the characters had personal connections and were not simply fighting each other for no reason, as if they were all friends "settling a little disagreement".

In addition to closely assisting Sakurai in the production of Smash 64, he also played a similar role in the development of Super Smash Bros. Melee and contributed greatly to the game's debugging process. In the credits of Smash 64 and Melee, he received a special thanks.

At E3 2005, Iwata offhandedly announced a new Super Smash Bros. game for the Wii, then codenamed "Nintendo Revolution", while the game was neither in development nor even planned. He approached Sakurai the next day and asked him to direct the next Smash game; if he refused, their other option was to port Melee to the new hardware with online support. This new game would become Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

In the reveal trailer for the Mii Fighters, Iwata is seen battling against Reggie Fils-Aimé's Mii Brawler as a Mii Swordfighter after a brawl between the two of them.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was Iwata's final request to Sakurai before his death, which Sakurai vowed to honor in the best way possible.

Gallery

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  Iwata's Mii Swordfighter with his Mario amiibo after defeating Reggie's Mii Brawler.

Trivia

• Smash for Wii U's Japanese release date happens to coincide with Satoru Iwata's birthday, while Ultimate's global release date is a day after Iwata's birthday.
  • Brawl's North American original release date was also set at three days before his birthday, before being delayed to 2008.