Nintendo president, Satora Iwata, passed away Saturday at the age of 55.
During his 2005 GDC keynote, Iwata-san said
“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.”
And it was the gamer in Iwata-san that has carried Nintendo through a series of financial highs and lows over the course of the 13 years that he served as president. It was also the gamer in him that moved the company toward amiibo and mobile gaming, while all the while focusing on family friendly games and game platforms.
While I didn’t play most of the early Nintendo games (like Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda) when they were first released, I took to them with a vengeance when they were re-released or re-booted for the Wii and Nintendo DS. So in many ways I am a Nintendo gamer of the Iwata era. And one of the most important ways has been as the mother of my own budding gamer.
My own daughter picked up the DS for the first time when she was 16 months old and started to move the character around the screen all on her own. Nintendo games have given me a safe space to introduce my daughter to video games. It is the more family friendly platform that I feel comfortable letting her play unsupervised while still being connected to the internet and to other gamers.
Nintendo games and consoles have become a cornerstone to our family gaming practice and today as Pea and I played a number of difference Mario iterations on our 3DSes I got a little teary as I recognized the debt of gratitude that I owed Iwata-san, not only for my own entertainment, but for some of the most valued gaming/sharing/bonding moments with my child.
Farewell, Satoru Iwata, and Godspeed.
