The recent passing of Satoru Iwata, who developed games such as Kirby and launched devices such as the Nintendo DS and Wii, brings memories flooding back for Six Ticks employees.

Who is Satoru Iwata?

Satoru Iwata was the fourth President of Nintendo, and the first President who was not related to the Yamauchi family (who started Nintendo). He led teams on such titles as The Legend of Zelda and Mario.

He started working at the HAL Laboratory, which is closely linked with Nintendo, after University. He worked as a programmer at HAL, working on titles such as Balloon Fight, EarthBound, and the Kirby games. In 1993, he became President of HAL, where he assisted in the development of Pokemon Gold and Silver for the Gameboy Color, and Pokemon Stadium for the Nintendo 64. He was also responsible for the compression tools used in Pokemon Gold and Silver.

He died on July 11th 2015 at the age of 55.

Memories

Nintendo always brings back a lot of memories for our team, particularly The Legend of Zelda and Pokemon. However, our favourite has to be Mario Kart (yes, the original SNES version!). There were other great titles on that console as well, that would have been developed when Satoru Iwata was President of HAL - Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario World, NBA Jam, Striker etc. Pokemon, particularly on the Gameboy, was a big hit with Six Ticks staff as well, and Satoru Iwata influenced most, if not all, of these titles.

More Than Just Games

Yes, we're just talking about computer games at the end of the day. So, why is it so important?

As an IT company, most of our staff, contractors and freelancers we work with are in the IT industry because of computer games. Characters such as Mario, storylines like Zelda, and games such as Pokemon were what got a lot of our staff involved in IT. And it's not just Six Ticks. A lot of people that you and your company deal with will have got into the IT industry because of computer games, and it is people like Satoru Iwata who engineered the games we love so much.

Tribute

Check out our new logo on our Facebook page for a little tribute to Satoru Iwata. The image will be our temporary logo for about a week, after which it will be available in our Facebook Profile Picture Gallery.

Go #RetroForIwata - pull out your old consoles, set them up to whichever TV works, and do some retro-gaming in memory of Satoru Iwata.