R.I.P. Satoru Iwata

I admit that I do not know a lot about the late CEO of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata.  Before the announcement of his death on Saturday July 11th, I could tell you that he was the president of all of Nintendo and that he frequently was on the Nintendo Direct videos that seemed to crop up every other week.  That's pretty much about it.  I could not have told you his age or even what his direct impact was while heading Nintendo; or even when he started working for Nintendo for that matter.

Sadly his passing has lead me to do a lot of reading, both in the form of obituaries and Wiki articles about his accomplishments, which you can read on his oddly short Wikipedia page.

Some things that stand out to me, was that in 2011 he took a voluntary 50% pay cut to help the company stay afloat with Microsoft and Sony and their respective systems and market share; Shigeru Miyamoto also took a paycut, although the exact percentage was not mentioned.  Iwata was also responsible for helping to bring about the DS system, and the Wii and their sequel-systems.  He also played a role in the Pokemon games as well as Warioware, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, and Animal Crossing.

If not the most tragic aspect of this all, is that Iwata was only 55 when died.  That's only 20 years older than me and 10 years younger than my own father.  And it was from something as potentially benign as a tumor on his bile duct, although death is not an uncommon result.

See, I'm no good at writing these and rather than turn the last part of this into something about me, I'll leave with the words of Lorik, King of Tantegel, Ruler of Alefgard, "May the light shine upon thee."

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental