On July 11th, 2015, the President of Nintendo Satoru Iwata passed away. In an
official statement from Nintendo, the death is attributed to a bile duct growth.
Iwata was not just a corporate man, he was a genius programmer. He helped debug Super Smash Brothers Melee to get it released on time, despite being the General Manager and not an engineer. He also saved Earthbound when the team making it couldn't fit it on a cartridge. It was threatened to be cancelled if the issues couldn't be fixed. Iwata not only recoded the entire core code base of the game, but he and his team compressed it enough to fit and pulled the release date forward by 1.5 years.
Also, when Gamefreak was making Gold and Silver, they were still new at game making. They couldn't fit all of the sprites and in the middle of development Iwata found a way to compress the data so much that there was enough space to add the whole Kanto region.
"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, GDC 2005
May he rest in peace. He will be missed.
