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
Satoru Iwata (December 6, 1959 -) is the fourth president of Nintendo. He has done much work with the GameCube and is responsible for its success. He makes cameos in a number of Nintendo games, but the most notable appearances were in WarioWare, Inc.: Minigame Mania where he appeared on Wario's TV and in WarioWare: Smooth Moves, where he (under the name Shop Manager Iwata) was the owner of a video game store and sold 18-Volt a Game & Watch for 9-Volt. He is also the executive producer of many games.
Satoru Iwata was born in Sapporo, Japan. He expressed interest in the creation of video games early on, and began producing electronic games at his home during his high school years. The several simple number games Iwata produced made use of an electronic calculator he shared with his schoolmates. Following high school, Iwata was admitted to the prestigious Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he majored in computer science. While attending the school, he did freelance work for HAL Laboratory, Inc., a subsidiary of Nintendo, as a programmer. Satoru Iwata is married.
After completing college, Iwata joined HAL Laboratory in a full-time capacity. He became the company's coordinator of software production in 1983. Some of the video games he helped create while he worked there were Balloon Fight, EarthBound, and the Kirby games. Iwata was eventually promoted to president of HAL in 1993. Nevertheless, both he and HAL sometimes aided in the creation of Nintendo video games. In 2000, Iwata took a position at Nintendo as the head of its corporate planning division. When Hiroshi Yamauchi, the company's president since 1949, retired on May 31, 2002, Iwata succeeded as Nintendo's fourth president and the first unrelated to the Yamauchi family through blood or marriage. He continues to help out at HAL as a consultant. It is said that Iwata still works as an artist there, assisting in creating concept art of Kirby characters for use in the Kirby series of video games. His latest projects are the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS. He comments on the Wii in his section of Nintendo's Wii website, Iwata Asks. Iwata has also worked on The Legend of Zelda, Mario, and the Animal Crossing series.
Gallery
Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto together, holding their Wii Remotes.
Satoru's cameo in WarioWare, Inc.: Minigame Mania.
Satoru's cameo in WarioWare: Smooth Moves.
Satoru Iwata (left) along with Shigeru Miyamoto (right) running away from Bowser in the promotional trailer of the Nintendo 3DS at E3 2010.
Trivia
- Satoru Iwata is the first Nintendo president not related to the previous presidents by blood or marriage.
