Foreword
2025 was a landmark year for Nintendo. First, the new hybrid console, Nintendo Switch 2, went on sale. The company reports record sales at launch, surpassing all previous console launches in Nintendo’s history, including the original Nintendo Switch, Wii and DS. And that’s great news. Secondly, this year is overshadowed by a sad anniversary for Nintendo: it has been exactly 10 years since the death of Satoru Iwata, the company’s fourth president and chief ideologist, who shaped modern Nintendo. It was he who made Nintendo what we know and love it for today: innovative and high-quality, versatile and simple, family-friendly and, most importantly, fun for all players.
His initiatives, such as the Nintendo Direct series of presentations, brought the company closer to its fans, making communication with the audience more personal and open. Satoru was also known for his ability to make bold decisions in difficult times. When Nintendo faced financial difficulties, he refused to make mass layoffs, instead cutting his own salary to keep the team intact.
His vision and passion for creating unique gaming experiences continue to inspire hundreds of thousands of people around the world. I am one of those who have been inspired by his personality, creativity and incredible achievements. His main brainchild, the Nintendo Switch, has brought countless moments of joy to players around the world. Unfortunately, Mr Iwata himself did not live to see this success. Nor did he see the Nintendo Switch 2, the logical continuation of the ideas he laid down in the original Nintendo Switch.
Nintendo clearly honours and follows Satoru Iwata’s philosophy, principles and approach to creating gaming products. Millions of gamers respect him and remember him fondly, calling the period of his leadership the best time of their lives. But how did he earn such universal recognition? What was his life journey like? What kind of person was he in his daily life and at work in the office?
If you are interested in these questions and my introduction, then welcome to the first of four blogs dedicated to this unique person.
Early years of life
Sapporo is the capital of Hokkaido Prefecture, located in northern Japan. Surrounded by mountains and forests, this city attracts millions of tourists every year thanks to its famous Snow Festival, where spectacular snow sculptures are created, and its hot springs, which offer relaxation and healing. It was there that Satoru Iwata was born on 6 December 1959. His father, Hiroshi Iwata, was an influential figure in local politics, serving as mayor of Muroran for 16 years. Satoru’s mother, Akiko Iwata, led a more modest life, devoting herself entirely to her family.
He was predicted to have a future career as a civil servant, but Satoru Iwata rejected this path. His first encounter with computers came in secondary school, when he came across a demonstration model that used telephone lines. Iwata often visited the underground, where he played a simple number game called ‘Game 31’ and mastered it to perfection. The game involved the player interacting with a sequence of numbers or performing simple mathematical tasks.
Later, in 1974–1975, while in high school, he saved money by working as a mail carrier and dishwasher, and with his father’s help, he purchased an H-P 65 programmable calculator. It was then that Satoru Iwata’s fascination with programming began, which his father completely rejected. In the first few months after buying the calculator, Hiroshi Iwata did not even talk to his son. During his school years, Iwata created his first games, mainly sports simulators such as baseball and volleyball.
A little later, in 1978, after buying his first computer, called the Commodore PET 2001, he wanted to understand how it worked, so he completely took it apart. Incidentally, the processor used in this computer was also used in the Nintendo Famicom, better known to us as the Dendy (or Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and North America). Subsequently, Satoru Iwata began developing games for this processor.
Admission to university and first job
After graduating from school in 1978, Satoru Iwata moved to Tokyo in April to study at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he studied computer science in depth. He lived in the Akihabara district, which became a popular destination for tourists and electronics enthusiasts from all over the world. During this time, Satoru became fascinated with the ancient Japanese martial art of stealth, known as ninjutsu. However, there is no specific information about his achievements in this martial art, such as his level of skill, participation in training, or certificates obtained. A professor at the institute noticed Iwata’s outstanding programming skills, noting that he wrote programs faster and more accurately than any of his other students.
While studying at the institute, he interned for free at Commodore Japan, where he assisted the chief engineer of a subsidiary company with technical and software development. This work became his favourite activity, to which he devoted all his free time. There he gained unique experience and skills that were virtually impossible to obtain outside of IT companies at the time.Later, his mentor taught him the basics of system hardware. Together with his friends, Iwata rented an apartment where they set up a place to develop and programme games. Their neighbours and fellow students nicknamed their room ‘Iwata’s Game Centre’. It was something like an informal club where enthusiastic amateurs worked together on small projects. At that time, personal computers such as the MSX, Commodore VIC-20, and Commodore 64 were just beginning to gain popularity in Japan, and the possibilities for creating games on them were limited.
Nevertheless, Iwata and his team utilised the resources available to them and frequently demonstrated their games in one of the first personal computer departments in Seibu department stores. There, in the same year, Satoru Iwata met Mitsuhiro Ikeda, the main initiator of the creation of a full-fledged company (who would serve as president from 1980 to 1993), and together with him and some of Iwata’s other colleagues, they subsequently founded HAL Laboratory. There are several interesting facts associated with the company’s name. First, the company was named HAL in honour of the HAL 9000 computer from Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Second, it is a hint at the desire to be ‘one step ahead’ of IBM (the letters H, A, L precede I, B, M in the alphabet). These are the Easter eggs that the founders of this game studio left for us, the players.
HAL Laboratory — Before Iwata’s Presidency
HAL Laboratory, founded in February 1980 by a group of young Japanese developers inspired by the idea of creating innovative games and technologies, became Satoru Iwata’s first professional platform. He joined the company that same year as a freelance programmer, working part-time. One of his first significant tasks was to create a peripheral device that allowed older personal computers to display graphics for video games. With this device, the young company developed several clones of Namco arcade games, such as Galaxian and Rally-X. Although this practice was common in the 1980s, Namco considered these releases to be ‘dishonest copies bordering on outright plagiarism.’ Nevertheless, this plagiarism situation did not prevent HAL Laboratory from becoming the first company to obtain a licence for Namco games. There is so little information about these games that their names remain unknown. However, this is probably not so important for history. The start-up company needed experience, and it gained it through its own, albeit controversial, methods. Nevertheless, Iwata did his job excellently and efficiently, which allowed the company to move forward and gradually develop.
After graduating from university in 1982, he became a full-time employee of the company. In total, there were five people working at HAL Laboratory, and he was the only programmer among the five employees. At the same time, Hiroshi Iwata became mayor of Muroran. Satoru Iwata’s father once again stopped communicating with him, but this time not for a few months, as in the case of the calculator, but for a whole six months. Iwata’s family also did not support his choice, believing that it was impossible to achieve success in the gaming industry. This is not surprising: in those years, work in this industry was considered unstable and lacking in prestige, which was probably the reason for the disagreement between Satoru and his family.
A year later, in 1983, Satoru Iwata was promoted to software production coordinator at HAL Laboratory. This role required him to establish relationships with other companies and corporations to promote and distribute the studio’s games. In addition to his primary role as production coordinator, Iwata was actively involved in marketing the studio’s projects, contributing significantly to their promotion. He also took care of maintaining order in the studio, personally cleaning up and organising meals for the entire team, ensuring comfortable working conditions.
It was during this period that Iwata first came into contact with Nintendo. The recently released Nintendo Famicom console, which dominated the Japanese market and outperformed competitors including the Sega SG-1000, caught the attention of the small studio HAL Laboratory. Iwata travelled to Kyoto to obtain permission from Nintendo’s management to develop games for this console, and successfully secured their agreement. This was a major success for HAL Laboratory: access to the popular Famicom platform opened up prospects for strengthening the studio’s position and entering a more profitable market with its new games.
The first games developed by Satoru Iwata
Satoru’s first commercial game on the new platform was a port of the arcade game Joust in 1983. It was one of his first major projects, demonstrating his talent for optimising code for the console’s limited hardware capabilities. The graphics and sound were adapted to the capabilities of the Famicom, which required significant simplification compared to the arcade version, but nevertheless retained the main elements of gameplay.
The game itself is a platformer in which the player controls a medieval knight riding an ostrich or a heron. Based on the principle of a knightly tournament, you have to accelerate and strike your opponents with a spear. The game supports a two-player mode, which was a significant advantage at the time, increasing its appeal and value to buyers. Subsequently, this game became the prototype for one of Iwata’s next games, Balloon Fight.
A year later, in 1984, Nintendo Research and Development 1 (hereinafter referred to as R&D1) collaborated with HAL Laboratory to develop and release the game Balloon Fight. Some sources suggest that Balloon Fight was originally conceived as an experiment in flight physics, which later turned into a full-fledged game. Nintendo sought to create a simple but addictive game that could compete in the arcade market and demonstrate the capabilities of the NES for home use.
Satoru Iwata was one of the key programmers of this game, once again demonstrating his outstanding programming skills. The lead programmer and designer was Yoshiaki Sakamoto, who later became a central figure in the Metroid series. At that time, development was led by the R&D1 team, and Shigeru Miyamoto was involved in the process, although more in an advisory role. So this can be considered the first meeting between Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto.
The gameplay was reminiscent of last year’s game Joust, but instead of racing on an ostrich, the player had to control the flight of a character on two balloons and try to pop the opponent’s balloons.
That same year, two more games were released on the Famicom, with Satoru Iwata serving as programmer. The first was Golf, for which he was the sole programmer. Nintendo initially offered the development of Golf to several companies, but they declined, doubting that such a large amount of data could fit on a cartridge. Satoru Iwata seized this opportunity and took on the project despite its complexity. He had to develop his own data compression method to fit all 18 courses. This game also became the first golf video game to use a scale for the power and accuracy of the club swing, which later became the standard for most games in this genre.
The gameplay is (surprise, surprise) golf, embodied in a computer game format with holes, clubs and other characteristic elements. Despite its apparent simplicity, this did not prevent the game from selling four million copies, ranking tenth among the best-selling games for the entire life cycle of the console. Its engaging gameplay and accessibility made it popular with a wide audience.
There is a very interesting and even sad Easter egg associated with this game. On Nintendo Switch with firmware version 4.0 or lower, you can activate it by holding the Joy-Cons in your hands and repeating Satoru Iwata’s famous ‘Directly to You’ gesture, stretching your arms forward, on the day of his death — 11 July. This Easter egg was created as a tribute to the man without whom Nintendo would have developed very differently.
Even today, his fans and colleagues at Nintendo remember this gesture, and at a recent presentation, Shigeru Miyamoto, who was present, performed it exactly as Satoru Iwata did. What’s more, he even repeated the phrase associated with this gesture, ‘directly to you’. This moment once again highlights how Nintendo continues to honour the legacy of its legendary president.
The second game was F-1 Race, which was developed entirely by HAL Laboratory under the leadership of Satoru Iwata, who was inspired by his passion for racing games. The main challenge in creating the game was implementing raster scrolling, a graphics technique that ensures smooth movement of objects on the screen, which was not originally supported by the Nintendo Famicom console. Because of this, the team and Iwata himself had to program this feature from scratch, which was a serious challenge for everyone. Nevertheless, the team and Iwata himself brilliantly accomplished this task, demonstrating their outstanding programming skills.
The gameplay was reminiscent of the iconic and influential racing game Pole Position, where the player controlled a racing car, trying to overtake opponents on a variety of tracks. This game laid the foundation for many modern racing simulators, offering dynamic races and a competitive spirit. Its exciting mechanics and intuitive controls made it popular among players, inspiring developers to create new projects in the genre.
The release of the NES the following year opened up opportunities for developers to enter the North American and European markets, which was an important step for the company. This allowed not only Japanese players but also foreign audiences to get acquainted with the studio’s first games. Gradually, all key projects were adapted and ported to new markets, which significantly increased their popularity. For the studio, this meant not only increased recognition, but also an increase in the amount of work related to localisation and game optimisation.
The success of the NES strengthened the company’s position on the international stage, laying the foundation for further development. In addition, it contributed to the formation of a global fan base, which became an important factor for the studio’s future growth.
Mother
The story behind the creation of the iconic Nintendo game developed by Ape Inc. and HAL Laboratory began in 1987. Screenwriter and director Shigesato Itoi pitched the idea for Mother to Shigeru Miyamoto while visiting the Nintendo office on other business. Miyamoto initially declined, but later assigned Itoi a team of developers. Inspired by Enix’s Dragon Quest, Itoi wanted to make an RPG that was different from the typical fantasy games of the 1980s with their swords, magic, and medieval worlds. He decided to focus on the modern world, everyday life, childhood emotions, and a deep storyline. The game featured unusual enemies, such as animated trucks and dolls with spirits inside them. The characters you could talk to shared strange or profound thoughts. The game poked fun at 1980s American culture — suburban homes, hamburgers, rock “n” roll — while retaining a Japanese style and feel.
Mother is set, as I mentioned above, in 1980s America and tells the story of a boy named Ninten. After mysterious supernatural events in his home, he discovers that he has unusual psionic abilities. Ninten learns that his great-grandfather studied these powers, and now he must embark on a journey to find eight melodies scattered around the world. Along the way, Ninten meets friends who help him fight unusual enemies, from animated objects to strange creatures. These melodies are needed to stop the alien villain Giygas, the all-encompassing antagonist of the Mother (Earthbound) series of games, who one fine day attacked Earth. He is also known as the ‘Incarnation of Evil’ or the ‘Universal Destroyer’.
The music from this game deserves a special mention. Mother was revolutionary for its time, combining simple and uncomplicated music familiar to many, known as chiptune, with professionally recorded vocal and instrumental parts. This inspired other composers to experiment with music in games.
Hirokazu ‘Hip’ Tanaka, an experienced Nintendo composer (who worked on Metroid and Kid Icarus), adapted the music to the limitations of the Famicom sound chip, which only supported five sound channels. The music of Mother became iconic, especially thanks to its emotional depth. Even I have a couple of compositions from this game in my music playlist.
Pollyanna is the game’s most famous track, symbolising hope and optimism. Its melody plays at the beginning of the game and sets the tone for Ninten’s adventure. A vocal version performed by singer Catherine Warwick was recorded for the soundtrack, but a chiptune version was used in the game.
Eight Melodies is the central musical theme of the game, linked to the plot. Nintend collects eight melodies, which are combined into one song in the finale to defeat Gigas. This composition is the emotional climax of the game, blending nostalgia and solemnity.
These tracks were subsequently reinterpreted in sequels and performed at concerts in Japan.
The main developer was Ape Inc., but it was assisted by HAL Laboratory, as Ape lacked experience working with the Famicom. Satoru Iwata, one of HAL’s chief programmers, managed the teams and solved technical difficulties. His main task was to optimise the game code to fit the ambitious design, large world, numerous NPCs with unique dialogues, and turn-based combat system into the limited capacity of the Famicom cartridge. This was a difficult task, as the system had only 2 KB of RAM and limited data storage capabilities.
The development of Mother was a bold experiment that brought together Itoi’s unconventional ideas, technical support from HAL and Nintendo, and a talented team. Despite the limitations of the Famicom and the publisher’s scepticism, the game became a pioneer in the RPG genre, offering a unique combination of humour, surrealism, and warmth. Mother inspired many indie games, such as Toby Fox’s Undertale, which drew ideas from the humour and emotional storytelling of the series.
The game was released on 27 July 1989, after two years in development, and received moderate success. Critics praised the game for its originality, but some players complained about its high difficulty and outdated graphics compared to Dragon Quest III, which was released around the same time. Incidentally, in Japan, the game was sold with the subtitle ‘The RPG that makes you cry,’ once again emphasising its emotional depth.
Kirby’s Dream Land
As always, the history of this project was not straightforward. In 1989, Nintendo released its first portable console, the Game Boy, created by the R&D1 division, which had previously given the world the successful Game & Watch portable device. Satoru Iwata, already a prominent figure in the industry at the time, saw a unique opportunity in this revolutionary development by his closest partner. An opportunity to enter the portable device market and establish a strong foothold there.
One of HAL Laboratory’s first projects for the Game Boy was the 1990 game Ghostbusters II, programmed by Satoshi Mitsuhara, Iwata’s colleague at HAL. The company quickly adapted to the new platform, recognising its potential for game development. And here we pause to focus on a key figure who played a huge role in the development of Kirby: Masahiro Sakurai.
Masahiro Sakurai began working at HAL Laboratory in 1989, at the age of 19, immediately after graduating from school. He was hired as a game designer thanks to his enthusiasm and interest in video games, despite his lack of professional experience. HAL Laboratory was looking for young talent, and Sakurai, who was passionate about creating games, successfully passed an interview with Satoru Iwata. He decided to make his first project, Twinkle Popo (later renamed Kirby’s Dream Land), accessible to beginners. This is connected with a curious and, in a sense, instructive story that deeply influenced Masahiro Sakurai’s philosophy of game creation.
Masahiro Sakurai was an avid fan of arcade games. He even once won 50 matches in a row in the incredibly popular game Street Fighter II. During one of his visits to the arcade, being an expert in games of this genre, he casually played King of Fighters ’95, which was set up so that opponents on both sides could not see each other. After crushing his opponent, Sakurai was very excited and pleased with himself and his skill. After a heated battle, he decided to see who his opponent was. To his surprise and shock, it turned out to be a complete novice who just wanted to have some fun with his significant other. To say that Sakurai remembered this situation for the rest of his life would be an understatement. However, it is safe to say that this incident had a profound effect on his approach to creating future games.
After making a prototype of Twinkle Popo, Masahiro Sakurai walked around the office and showed it to his colleagues. It was a simple platformer in which the player could suck up enemies and use them to attack other opponents in their path. At that point, there was no clear idea of what the main character would look like. Masahiro created a simple character — a ball with legs and arms — and presented it as a prototype for the hero. At the time of development, no one knew that Kirby was pink, as the Game Boy had a black and white screen. Sakurai wanted Kirby to be pink, but Shigeru Miyamoto, then a producer at Nintendo, imagined him as yellow. In the end, pink won out and became the canonical colour. The staff liked the character so much that they decided to keep him as the main character and began full-fledged development of the game within the studio.
Of course, as always, development did not go smoothly. As usual, problems arose due to the limitations of the consoles of the time. Considering that the game was created for a portable console with even fewer capabilities than the adult version, difficulties and problems arose here and there. The limitations of the Game Boy, with its weak graphics and meagre memory, became the main challenges for the development team led by Masahiro Sakurai and Satoru Iwata. The entire game had to fit into a measly 512 kilobits — not even a kilobyte, which seems unthinkable today. Because of this, they had to reuse the same sprites multiple times, carefully consider the design of locations, and strictly limit the number of frames. But the problems didn’t end there. Sakurai and Iwata’s desire to make the game truly fun forced them to distract themselves with ‘less important’ tasks: for example, defeating a boss had to be accompanied by the hero dancing to joyful music, and enemies had to descend stairs. For the Popopo dance scene (yes, that was Kirby’s name before the final polish of the project), it was necessary to know the exact number of frames, but the composer could not even approximate that number. So Sakurai recorded the melody on a cassette tape and listened to it over and over again while creating the victory animation. Sakurai’s team and mentor could have ignored his ideas and requests. After all, he was working on his first project ever. But would HAL Laboratory have created a project that still delights with its lightness, kindness, simplicity, and cosiness, spawning an entire game series? I highly doubt it.
Work on the project was coming to an end. Twinkle Popo was finally ready, but… it was destined for commercial failure. No, I don’t mean to say that 25,000 copies sold is a small number, but for the employees of HAL Laboratory, who had invested a disproportionate amount of time, effort and soul into the game, this result seemed unfair. The project they believed in deserved better. In this, let’s be honest, catastrophic situation for the studio, Satoru Iwata turned to his closest friend and partner, Nintendo, for support. The company actively joined in the refinement process, polishing the gameplay and conducting thorough testing. This is why the game became the most optimised for the Game Boy. Shigeru Miyamoto, who saw enormous potential in the game, insisted on a radical step: rebranding. It was he who suggested renaming Twinkle Popo to Kirby’s Dream Land in order to attract the attention of American and European players. This decision was fateful, effectively saving the game.
Kirby’s Dream Land became an unexpected hit, especially in Japan and the United States, laying the foundation for the franchise’s long-term popularity. Its cute style, colourful characters, and memorable soundtrack won the hearts of many. Kirby was perceived as a charismatic and unique character. For many, the game was the perfect length for a handheld system, offering several hours of engaging platformer gameplay. According to data, the game sold 5.13 million copies worldwide. This made it the best-selling game in the franchise for three decades, until it was surpassed in 2022 by Kirby and the Forgotten Land, which sold 7.52 million copies. The game’s success cemented HAL Laboratory’s position as a partner to Nintendo and launched Masahiro Sakurai’s long and prolific career in the gaming industry.
Problems at HAL Laboratory
However, not everything is so smooth. The game Metal Slayer Glory, released last year, became one of the most ambitious but financially disastrous in the company’s history. The long and protracted development, release on the Famicom (even though the Super Famicom had already been out for a year by that point), and high price due to the use of an 8-megabit (or 1-megabyte) cartridge led to the game’s collapse. A series of unsuccessful decisions related to the development and release of games led to the actual bankruptcy of HAL Laboratory. Even the successful sales of Kirby’s Dream Land could not cover the losses caused by the failure of this and other projects.
In a 1999 interview, Satoru Iwata, future president of Nintendo and then president of HAL Laboratory, explained the reasons for the crisis:
“The situation was this: we were desperately short of development time. Due to tight deadlines, we released games that were far from complete and did not meet our high quality standards. As a result, these projects sold poorly, which only exacerbated our financial situation. By the time we got to the next game, we were in an even more desperate situation, creating a vicious circle.”
This could be the end of my story, as well as the story of Satoru Iwata, whose role in the fate of HAL Laboratory and Nintendo proved to be truly fateful. Without Iwata as president of HAL Laboratory and then Nintendo, the future of both companies could have turned out very differently. Nintendo, as HAL’s closest partner, could not stand idly by and watch their long-time ally and friend on the verge of closure. In an effort to support the company with which they had a close relationship, Nintendo played a key role in saving HAL Laboratory and bought it out, turning it into a second-party developer. But Nintendo and its then-president had one condition: that Satoru Iwata become president of HAL Laboratory. And so he did, in 1993, replacing HAL’s previous president, Mitsuhiro Ikeda. Iwata accepted the offer with enthusiasm, but also with a sense of responsibility. He had to save HAL Laboratory…
So what?
You probably don’t understand why this section appeared on my blog, but I’ll explain briefly. I borrowed this technique, if I may say so, from Reggie Fiss-Eme’s book Playing by the Rules. In the book, this section was used to draw conclusions from situations in which Reggie was involved. I recently read the entire book (which, by the way, is excellent and I recommend to anyone interested in the gaming industry) and decided to add this technique to my blog. I hope you like it.
From many situations in my blog, we can see that Satoru Iwata was a man of exceptional determination, curiosity, and sensitivity to those around him. These qualities were repeatedly evident in his work on creating games and in his collaboration with colleagues, helping him achieve success and build productive relationships in a professional environment.
Afterword
In the second part of this blog series, you will learn how Iwata saved HAL Laboratory, how he became president of Nintendo, and how he changed it forever.
I hope we won’t be saying goodbye for long. Good luck, everyone, and see you soon!
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