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Nintendo president Satoru Iwata passes away at 55
It's a sad day for the video game world. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata passed away yesterday at 55 years of age. The cause of his unfortunate death was a bile duct growth.
Nintendo announced the news with a brief one-sentence notification of death and personnel change of a representative director. Iwata had served as Nintendo's president since May 2002. Iwata effectively spent his entire career at Nintendo, beginning at HAL Laboratory, Inc. on titles such as EarthBound and the Kirby series. He was the fourth president in Nintendo history, taking over after Hiroshi Yamauchi retired.
Nintendo's remaining representative directors are Shigeru Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda.
In 2014, Iwata took time away from the public spotlight for medical reasons. It was later revealed to be for a surgery to remove a tumor on his bile duct. It seems as if that ailment ultimately proved fatal.
Our thoughts are with Iwata's family, friends, and loved ones. The video game community lost a respected visionary with his passing. May he rest in peace.
I know he had some surgery for that before E3 2014, but guess it came back.
Though I really didn't know he had done a lot of programming on some games (Like Balloon Fight, Kirby, and Earthbound. More or less was the only reason why Earthbound was able to be finished.) along with some major programming on Pokemon Stadium and Pokemon Gold and Silver (Allowing the Kanto region to fit onto the cart.) I think he also helped on on the original Smash Bros and Melee as well.
You can see here about all of it
55 years old is way too young. Man, I enjoyed seeing the silly muppets of him, Reggie, and Miyamoto along with that one thing he and Reggie did for the new Smash Bros game.
Wonder what's going to happen in the future now, since obviously this came from out of nowhere.
