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Don't know whether to post this here or in Gaming so I put it here and a mod can move it if needed

Yes, this is true.

Source

I'm shocked that this happened to Iwata. I remember hearing he had health problems in the past, but the fact that he's dead now...

He was a great, influential man when it came to Nintendo, and was part of the company's charm along with people like Reggie and Miyamoto. You will be missed. :C

Lots of the things we love wouldn't exist if it weren't for him. Definitely sad to lose him.

And one thing that comes to mind is how the next Nintendo Direct will be missing an all-too-familiar face. Sad to consider.

May he rest in peace.

I think... you can't be here in this community if you were not in some way touched by gaming. For many of this, this was because of Nintendo and Runouw making Super Mario 63. Many of us, we're young. We grew up not just with Nintendo, but with Nintendo hitting its stride, in the SNES and N64 age, where they'd gone so far but nowhere near as far as they had yet to go. Iwata was a big part of that, working with HAL on the Earthbound and Kirby games and other such games. As the proud owner of the DS port of Kirby Super Star and an adorable Kirby wallet, I know even before he became president, he was part of something that meant something to me. Just the idea of an adorable, tiny, yet badass little gumball who can do anything with a smile on his face just makes me happy.

Iwata took over the reins as president in the era where I reached my full consciousness as a gamer, and seeing as I'm piss-ass-broke and therefore a generation and a half behind on everything, the era of gaming that I'm in right now. It's therapeutic, it's enjoyable, it's engaging, and most importantly Nintendo was the inspiration behind my artistic career. With characters like Kirby, I started writing the fanfics that got me interested and capable of my own writing. Runouw.com and those fanfic communities are why I haven't given up at times where I should have, and that's because of Nintendo, and in large part because of Iwata.

His death has made me realize just how much it means to leave with something that can change and impact people in ways even they didn't expect, and that's something I aspire to do. It's such a goddamn shame that he's passed on so young after spending such time being in poor health, but I hope he had at least an idea of what kind of legacy he left. It's a fantastic one. It's changed me as a human being and created me as an artist, and gave me some dynamite friends. I'm pouring one out for you, Iwata. I owed you one anyways.

I started to cry when I heard of this.

And the images of sad Nintendo characters all over the web didn't help keeping the tears from flowing.

This... it's unbelievable...

Man, as probably the biggest Nintendo fan on Runouw, I'm so tear jerked by this that I can't even put it into words. This man brought joy, laughter, and happiness to so many gamers everywhere. Nintendo Directs and maybe even Nintendo itself will never be the same without him. RIP, you brilliant man! Thank you for everything you did for the gaming community!

"On my business card, I'm president of a corporate company. In my mind, I'm a game developer. In my heart, I'm a gamer"
-Satoru Iwata

The tears came a bit late, but suddenly I looked at my username, and then my avatar, and realized just how much of an impact he and his company had.

My first videogame was Super Mario Bros: Deluxe, for the GBC. I was born in 1996, so most of my early childhood was spent with what Yamauchi was president for. Heck, most of the early games that Mr. Iwata's had a hand in I've only experienced through friends because of how quiet I was about wanting more as a kid. The most fun I had in grade school were nights when my sisters would bring me to their friend's house to play Mario Power Tennis or Pokemon Stadium on his N64. More importantly, we played Melee on GCN, where I met Kirby, where of course, I spammed his Rock move. I'm not even sure why I picked him up out of all of the characters... Maybe it's because Kirby was so plush and simple. Maybe its because he had such diverse animations and moves. Maybe it was because he could be anything he wanted to be with that Inhale move. I'm most definitely over-analyzing childhood right now, but I can't help wondering why my younger self loved him so much.

When I was first exposed to the internet, all I would look for were things related to Nintendo. My sister lent me her laptop on long trips and in her apartment (she was a college student at the time) and that's how I found Newgrounds. Before I found Super Mario 63 and this amazing website, I watched parodies of all the names I recognized from Smash Bros. SMBZ for my fighting fix, crossovers and fanwork with more serious tones like Resident Mario, or Mario Brothers (another about Luigi going on a gory quest to revive his brother whose name escapes me), and of course N!N10Doh!, SMB Bloopers and the like for my comedy fix. On youtube I would watch Brawl machinimations (Melee ones edited in WMM before Brawl was released) before Machinima became a major network. Guys like GuitarmasterX7, Shippidge, MALRWiiStation360, all of VirtualSmash... Other people that Nintendo touched on a personal level.



I also remember in 6th grade, I did two projects.

The first gave me the task of making an analogy for a US legislative process, and my simple middle school mind told me to compare it to beating the worlds of SMB. Amazingly silly right? All it is beating one level and going to the next.

The second one gave me the task of making a poster about someone important in my life. In a class of people copping out and choosing a parent, I decided I wanted to make mine on Shigeru Miyamoto. Of course, everyone laughed, both at my decision and at the picture of him holding the sword and shield from his LoZ:TP reveal. But I took that project seriously and realized how big Nintendo was in my life. And that summer, I discovered Super Mario 63 and the first and greatest website I've ever been a part of. The first thing I did was think of a username (that surprisingly doesn't seem silly to most people that see it) and find an image of my favorite character to use as an avatar. Back then, I had a lot of fleeting dreams; I wanted to learn how to hack my wii so I could make machinimations too and make my own character with my own moveset, I wanted to write stories starring my favorite childhood heroes, I brainstormed sequels and spinoffs to games with too many sequels. Before this phase of my life, I figured I was smart, but it was at this point that I felt I could be creative. I started thinking instead of just memorizing and I feel like I owe this to both Nintendo, and this community.



A few years later, Mr. Iwata started doing Directs, and though I've only seen a few (I've never been great with keeping up with news), they showed me enough of him to tell me he was more than just a programmer and businessman; simply the last name shown in every staff roll. When he said he would cut his own pay for the sake of Nintendo, I only thought "Wow. That's a true leader." Not once did I think he wouldn't follow through. The latest E3 presentation only reinforced that fun, charming, and caring image I have. I feel guilty with this username, knowing so little about the president of its inspiration until only recently, but he, along with Mr. Miyamoto, Masahiro Sakurai, Reggie, and so many other names that I now know and appreciate immensely, was an integral part of the Nintendo that I've literally grown up on.

It's hard to imagine the next Nintendo title having a different name at the end of the credits. It's even harder to imagine the next Nintendo Direct without Mr. Iwata delivering news directly to us.

Somehow I turned this largely into an essay about myself, but I think Nintendo, more specifically Iwata's Nintendo, makes up a large chunk of who I am. Probably more than the five ninths (one half?) that it makes of my username.

Well, it's a testament to his legacy that we have considered Nintendo such a huge part of our lives, so I think it quite understandable that you have a personal story to tell in relation to the news. I'm with you, Nin, and was never too up on the latest news, especially in recent years, but Nintendo always did have a special place in my heart.

I got a NES when I was very young, and loved every second of it, and with a crappy childhood in general, it was one of the few happy things for me and my sister throughout. I even went so far as to getting a subscription to Nintendo Power, and when the Super NES came out, I scrimped, saved, begged and borrowed until we could get it, soon after launch, and loved the hell out of that too. It wasn't until I got to High-School, and then College that I really branched out to the other systems, but I always was a Nintendo Fanboy at heart. I was crushed when the Virtual Boy flopped (poor Gunpei, may he rest in peace), and I was ecstatic when SM64 was well received and the N64 started doing well, and even more ecstatic when the Wii brought the company back into the limelight. I too remember much of Hiroshi's rule, especially reading books on the history of Nintendo and about the struggle the company went though, while reviving the gaming industry from the great video game crash of the 1970s. The fact that video games have survived as an industry today is mainly due to the work of Nintendo in the 70s and 80s.

I also remember Hiroshi Yamauchi stepping down, and handing the reigns to a young man by the name of Satoru Iwata, and wondering, along with the rest of the Nintendo fanbase, if he was up to the task. But he proved that he had the very thing we all hoped for, a love of video games, and a commitment to Nintendo, and he brought us through the creation of the DS, and the creation of the Wii, and made our beloved Nintendo famous again. He has been an ever increasing face of the Nintendo we all know and love, and especially with things like Nintendo Direct, and all the other fun he's had with E3 presentations and such, we have all gotten the chance to get to know him a bit better, and appreciate the person behind the red logo.

He will be missed. Not quite as famously as Steve Jobs, but close. Surely anyone who calls themselves any shade of Nintendo fan knows who he was, and what he was to the company. He will be missed as the president of a company we love, he will be missed as someone who wanted very much to bring us all together, and he will be missed as a gamer who loved the company right there with us.

Rest in peace, Satoru-san. Thank you.

I remember having the SNES is my first console ever but the most memorable console was the N64. I remember playing it with my brothers and sister and spending hours playing classics like Mario Kart 64, Mario Party 2, Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, etc.

After that, Nintendo console has been always my favourites, having only one non-BigN console. Even when my parents stopped paying for the console, I went ahead and brought them myself. I even looked about the Nintendo Crash too.

I remember how Satoru Iwata was in Directs. He looked professional like any businessman but the fact that he was willing to interact directly with the fans with the Nintendo Directs and Iwata Asks show that he was caring about the thing he was selling and about those who brought it.

I even remember that time where instead of firing people when Nintendo had a low financially, he cut his own salary in half to take the blame. Not only was he passionate, he was humble when faced with difficulties.

"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
1959-2015
R.I.P.