The announcement of Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata's passing of complications related to bile duct cancer was as sudden as it was devastating for both the gaming industry and Nintendo's many fans. Iwata had become an extremely popular figure during his many years with the company, both thanks to his incredible talents and his efforts to engage the Nintendo fanbase like never before. Before reaching the heights he had achieved prior to his untimely death, Iwata had a hand in creating some of the greatest games ever seen on Nintendo consoles. From his days working with Hal Laboratory - where his sublime coding skills not only led to great software but also helped him pull of the odd miracle or two - right up to his ascension to the top of the ranks at Nintendo, if Iwata's name was on a product then you could almost guarantee that you were going to get a great game. Simply put, he was the heart that made Nintendo tick, and he never lost his love for gaming, regardless of the tolls that both the industry and his illness slowly took on him. In commemoration of his remarkable achievements over the course of more than three decades in the gaming industry, here we look at some of the greatest games that ever bore his name.
10. Pokémon Gold & Silver
The Pokémon series was already a monolith in gaming thanks to the monstrous success of Red and Blue, which meant that Game Freak really had to pull out all of the stops to make sure their sequels lived up to players' expectations and offered them even more. One of the many ideas that the company had was to bring the world of Kanto back to life after the player had beaten the Elite Four in Gold and Silver, but they were struggling to cram everything that they wanted into the rather tiny Gameboy carts. Enter Satoru Iwata. Long established as a programming genius thanks to his work with Hal Laboratory, Iwata began working on compression techniques in an effort to help Game Freak get Kanto into the game. The result was Pokemon players getting to enjoy an enormous world, with Iwata's work essentially giving them another game inside. Though he wasn't one of the main programmers for the title, this little bit of brilliance earned Iwata a special thank you in the end credits, cementing his already enormous reputation.
Lee Price is a writer for 411mania.com and Starburst Magazine, which is published in the UK. He is currently working as a freelance writer. He hopes to one day fund his addiction to video games by writing about video games, and he maintains a sporadically updated blog at leesrandombulls*it.wordpress.com
