10 Ways Nintendo Were Almost COMPLETELY Different

There is no figure who has shaped Nintendo in recent memory more than Satoru Iwata. He became the president of Hal Laboratory in 1993, which went on to create the Super Smash Bros. franchise. When the original Pokémon games suffered game-crashing bugs, Iwata fixed everything in one week. In his spare time, he also devised a superior compression tool that expanded the game's memory.

Iwata was such a visionary, Nintendo made him the CEO of the entire company in 2002. It cannot be stressed how important this decision was since Iwata was the first president of Nintendo outside the Yamauchi bloodline.

As the new leader, Iwata had to shake things up to prove he was worthy of the role. After Sony and Microsoft rejected motion controls for their consoles, Iwata had the technology implemented into the Wii and advertise it the system's central selling point. The Wii went on to sell 100 million consoles, making it the most successful Nintendo non-portable console ever.

If Iwata wasn't hired by Nintendo or became the CEO, it's possible we would have no Smash Bros, Pokémon, Wii, or motion-controls.