Shared a cab with Iwata in 2001 or so before he was CEO. I asked him what he did, and he said 何でも屋 "a bit of everything." He certainly did.
Scot Ritchey, Treehouse
Satoru Iwata's legacy most certainly is a bit of everything. In this thread we try to capture this bit of everything at the various points in his career, with plenty sources for further readings and/or watchings. Mostly thanks to his Iwata Asks, but also other appearances and sources, we can find his various contributions. Another good source may be his lengthy
interview on 4gamer.net that still hasn't been translated completely.
For easier digesting the list is sorted chronologically (usually by game release date).
~ 1959 ~
Born December 6 in Sapporo, Hokkaido
~ 1976 ~
Buys a Hewlett Packard HP-65, a programmable calculator.
Hobonichi - Learn from the president! (Japanese)
~ 1978 ~
Enters Tokyo Institute of Technology Faculty of Engineering
Buys a Commodore PET from his university admission presents.
Hobonichi - Learn from the president! (Japanese)
Commodore PET and VIC 20 both use the same 6502 CPU that the later Famicom/NES would use.
~ 1980 ~
Car Race ][ (Commodore PET): game programmed for the PET Users' Club
Car Race ][ - Mobygames
From the book
Commodore: A Company on the Edge, interview with Yash Terakura who was the head engineer of Commodore Japan at the time.
Tramiel was using intense competition to bring out the best in his people. The biggest rivalry occurred between the systems group at MOS Technology and Moorpark in Silicon Valley. Now, he brought Commodore Japan into the competition.
Notes: Jack Tramiel was founder and head of Commodore, Moorpark was their own R&D, MOS Technology in Pennsylvania, producer of the 6502 CPUs, was bought in 1976.
Terakura was largely unaware of the political battles between the east coast and the west coast when Tramiel asked him to design a color PET computer. "I don't recall him ever getting caught up with anybody's politics" says Peddle. Tramiel asked Terakura to bring his prototype to the upcoming Hanover Fair in April 1980.
To add color to the PET, Terakura replaced the 6845 video chip with a standard color video chip similar to the Texas Instruments TMS9918 chip. This was not a plug-in replacement, forcing Terakura to rewire the video section of the board. "It was a mockup with experimental stuff," says Terakura
The engineer recived help from a group of young Japanese PET 2001 owners, who frequently stopped by the Commodore Japan office. "All those kids from high school and collage, they all owned a PET", he says. "It was pretty expensive, like a $3000 machine, but everybody had one." At home, the kids used their primitive PET 2001 computers with only eight kilobytes of memory and a rubber calculator-style keyboard. When Commodore released the more expensive PET computers with more memory and real keyboards, the kids yearned to use the better machines. "They had smaller machines and wanted to have bigger and better machines, so they came over to my office to use the better machines we had."
One of the young engineers was 21-year old Satoru Iwata, the future CEO of Nintendo. "Iwata was one of these kind of groupies when I was in Commodore who used to come to my office all the time" says Terakura. "He tried to get all the information from me about the new type of machines."
Although curiosity brought the young programmers to Commodore Japan, they eventually became unpaid interns for the company. "His job was to come to my office and kind of clean everyting up, making backup files of the different software," laughs Terakura. "Those days we had a bunch of floppies, so he had to check everything and make sure everything was updated. He was pretty much my own secretary."
Terakura was something of a mentor to the young Iwata. "He was going to school at the time in college. So on the way home he always stopped by our office, almost every day. There were a few of them like that. That was before the Nintendo days and everybody wanted to work on a PET."
When Tramiel gave Terakura the assignment to design a new color computer, Iwata and the other groupies were understandably excited. "Being a software engineer, he wanted to get all the inside information I guess" he says.
Iwata's intense interest in the machine was apparent, and soon he was helping code the ROM software in the prototype. "He was a very good software engineer and he was helping me develop some of the test programs," says Terakura. "Actually he helped me design the software side of the Commodore ColorPET, the one I built."
Hangs out at Seibu Ikebukuro store in Akihabara to program among like minded people. A clerk wants to found HAL with him. Works part-time at HAL Laboratory as a sophomore, is the first programmer there.
Hobonichi - Learn from the president! (Japanese)
Iwata: We were exactly the same in that sense. Ubisoft was named after Ubiquity because you wanted to be everywhere in the world and HAL was named as such because each letter put us one step ahead of IBM! (Laughs)
What Is And What Isn't Possible
~ 1981 ~
Star Battle (Commodore VIC 20): programmer
Star Battle is based on Galaxian, which Commodore did have the license to, but only for Japan. It was taken off the market because of this, so it's a little tough to find.
Immediately after Commodore Japan's copyright is a programmer credit for Satoru Iwata, hidden between 0x29A and 0x2F6:
Code:
THIS PROGRAM WAS
WRITTEN BY
- SATORU IWATA -
APR.19.1981
HAL LABORATORY
AKIHABARA
TOKYO JAPAN
Star Battle – The Cutting Room Floor
~ 1982 ~
Graduated at Tokyo Institute of Technology Faculty of Engineering
Joining HAL Laboratory as 5th full time member (Source: GameCenter CX video below)
~ 1983 ~
Visits Nintendo asking to be able to program for the Famicom, gets to work on software right away, first works being Pinball and Golf.
Hobonichi - Learn from the president! (Japanese)
~ 1984 ~
Member of Board of Directors at HAL (aged 24)
Golf (NES): programmer
Shimamura: Ok. What I really want to tell game fans about are the golf courses in the game. Veteran gamers are probably familiar with the very first Golf game for the NES.
Iwata: I know it! I worked as the programmer on that game! (laughs)
Shimamura: That's right! (laughs) We've actually taken nine of the best holes from the original 18 on NES Golf for Wii Sports Golf, and brought them back to life in 3D. So people now in their 30s, some of whom may not have played video games for years, will be able to enjoy taking a trip down memory lane when they see what those old-school courses look like in 3D.
Games That Even the People Watching Can Enjoy
~ 1985 ~
Balloon Fight (NES): programmer, smoother NES port with addition of new Balloon Trip mode
GameCenter CX guest appearance
GameCenter CX producer Tsuyoshi Kan about the circumstances of the recording
Super Mario Bros. (NES): inspired smooth physics, momentum
Iwata: I'm going to ask you all about what happened after you were thrown into the Super Mario series in a moment. But casting my mind back, I believe I met you just prior to that.
Nakago: That's right. What sticks in my mind in particular is the guidance you gave me at the time of Balloon Fight.
Iwata: Ah yes. At that time, there was an arcade circuit board called the Nintendo Vs. System that used the same chipset as the Famicom.
Nakago: The Vs. System! That really takes me back! (laughs)
Iwata: There were a lot of games that were developed both for the arcade and the Famicom. HAL Laboratory worked on the home console version of Balloon Fight while SRD…
Nakago: We worked on the arcade version. Then after we'd completed it, we wondered why the player's movements were smoother on the home version developed by HAL and asked Iwata-san for some advice.
Iwata: That's when I told Nakago-san everything I knew. One thing I recommended was that instead of calculating the character's position using integers, they should also calculate it using decimal points, thereby doubling the precision. In this way, calculating gravity, buoyancy, acceleration and deceleration all become more precise and the movements look smoother. That's the kind of thing I explained at the time.
Nakago: When Iwata-san explained all this to me, the scales fell from my eyes! (laughs) But I remember Miyamoto-san complaining: "Why do you have to go to another company to find this stuff out?" (laughs)
Iwata: I was actually really pleased to be asked.
Nakago: Is that right? (laughs)
Iwata: Well, I hoped it would prove useful, and I believe that it did when you came to work on Super Mario Bros.
Nakago: Yes, it proved incredibly useful. The reason why Mario moves so smoothly in the underwater stages is thanks to the guidance I was given by you.
Iwata: At that point, I had been involved in the development of a whole variety of software while working at HAL Laboratory, but I'd always thought: "It's only the main Mario series that I've had nothing to do with." But it turns out that because of what I told Nakago-san all those years ago, I was actually indirectly involved in a Mario title. When I found that out, I was rather pleased! (laughs)
It All Began In 1984
Super Mario Bros. (NES): water levels physics verbatim from Balloon Fight
Iwata: …And swim in the sea.
Miyamoto: In terms of the game's structure, the swimming part is Balloon Fight.
Iwata: You're right. That's exactly what it is.
Letting Everyone Know It Was A Good Mushroom
~ 1988 ~
Famicom Grand Prix II: 3D Hot Rally:
Miyamoto: I suppose so. To go way back, I even made a 3D Famicom game on disk that you played wearing goggles. We made that with you, Iwata-san.
Iwata: Right, right! (laughs) The first work Miyamoto-san and I did together was a racing game for the Family Computer Disk System that you played wearing goggles.
Itoi: Oh, really?!
Iwata: A game called Famicom Grand Prix II: 3D Hot Rally.
Miyamoto: To explain how it happened, there was a racing game that the company Iwata-san was at, called HAL Laboratory, Inc., had made. HAL Laboratory had always been strong in technology, so they made a racing game with courses featuring ups and downs like you’d never seen before. But…it just wasn’t fun.
Iwata: Yeah.
Everyone: (laughs)
Miyamoto: They thought it was really awesome, but probably wouldn’t sell the way it was, so I got involved.
Iwata: In other words, you fixed it. (laughs)
Miyamoto: It was a normal racing game, but I remade the overall structure of the rallies and made the main character Mario. In other words, it became a game in which Mario races a buggy around courses with a lot of intense ups and downs.
Itoi: I see.
Miyamoto: Then I thought, “Let’s make that pop out.” I made an image for the right eye and an image for the left eye, and…
Iwata: You made special goggles with a liquid crystal shutter.
Miyamoto: That was the first work we did together.
Iwata: We had been acquainted before, but Famicom Grand Prix II: 3D Hot Rally was the first game we worked together on closely.
Satoru Iwata Talks About Past Projects
~ 1989 ~
Dragon Warrior 1 (NES, Western localization): programming director (uncredited)
Yuji Horii tweet (Japanese)
Iwata Asks: Dragon Quest IX (Japanese)
~ 1991 ~
Representative director at HAL, starts management restructuring, initiates creation of "Tinkle☆Popo" resulting in Kirby's Dream Land
Hobonichi - Learn from the president! (Japanese)
Tinkle☆Popo - Japanese Secrets!
~ 1993 ~
President at HAL (aged 33)
Mission to repay a debt of 1.5 billion yen (today over US$ 24 million) within six years.
Hobonichi - Learn from the president! (Japanese)
Kirby's Adventure: producer
Iwata: Earlier, when we made Kirby's Adventure, we made the Copy Abilities system for the first time, but when I consulted Suga-san, who was the main programmer and leader, he said something I will remember my whole life. He said, "Are we…really going to do this?"
Kawase: If the programmers had said it was impossible, I would have given up, but Nakano-san thought a moment and said all cool-like, "It can be done!" Just like you once said, Iwata-san! (laughs)
Iwata: The legend of the programmers who never say no continues. (laughs)
(Editor's note: Iwata-san was the one of the actual forerunners who started this legend. In an interview column about him by copywriter Shigesato Itoi, Iwata-san mentioned that if a programmer says no, it would make it harder for ideas to come up. The full column is
available online in Japanese, at Itoi-san's website "Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun" (Almost Daily Itoi Newspaper)
Programmers Never Say No
Iwata: When I first started making Kirby, there was a kindergarten right next door. I'll never forget how moved I was the first time I saw doodles there of Kirby. That may have been the first time I realized that the world would recognize what we had made.
For Love of Kirby
~ 1994 ~
Mother 2/Earthbound: program director, programmer, co-producer
–: Well, in 1989, the RPG “Mother” for the Famicom, created by Shigesato Itoi, went on sale. The sequel, Mother 2 Gigas Strikes Back, was being developed for the Super Famicom but, to put it simply, there were some setbacks. Is that okay?
Itoi: Sure.
–: At the time, the man who showed up while Mother 2 was having difficulties during development and needed to fix a number of things was Satoru Iwata-san. By the way, at that time you were both the President of HAL Laboratories and a programmer, right?
Iwata: Correct.
Itoi: Wasn’t there a famous line Iwata-san delivered at the time?
–: I was about to say that! Well, as Iwata-san was checking how far you had gotten at the time, he turned towards Shigesato Itoi and I’ve been told said: “If you are going to…”
Itoi: “If you are going to continue to make this game like this, it is going to take two years.”
–: If you want to speak, please tell the whole story.
Iwata: Um, according to my memory, at the time the project wasn’t even on its way to being finished yet. So the first thing I said to Itoi-san was “I don’t think you’re going to be able to finish if you go on like this.”
–: Wow.
Iwata: I continued and told him “I can help you if you would like but there are two ways to proceed.” That is when I said what Itoi-san just credited to me. I then went on to say “If we used what you have now and fix it, it will take 2 years. If we can start fresh, it’ll take half a year.”
Itoi: Pretty cool, right?
–: Itoi-san, what did you do after hearing that?
Itoi: Well, of course I said “please!” but if I tell you the truth, at the time I didn’t really understand.
Iwata: At that point, I told him “I’ll try to get it working” and took what they had made up to that point with me. Exactly a month after that we got the map scrolling to work and showed it to Itoi-san’s team. They were all really shocked.
Itoi: Yeah, we were very surprised. We were all like “Whoa! It’s working!”
–: Wow, development had had that many issues.
Iwata: Everyone was really surprised and the whole environment was oddly tense but to me I had the opposite reaction; it was odd. We’d only completed a simple task.
Itoi: We hadn’t even been able to do something “simple” for a while. Now that I think about it, we were in a bad place. From that point forward we all relied on Iwata-san. To tell the truth, it took half a year to get everything working.
–: In total, about how long was Mother 2’s development time?
Itoi: How long…? How long was it again?
Iwata: Ummm, from the beginning of development it was pretty much 5 years.
–: That’s including the the time you weren’t there, Iwata-san?
Iwata: Yes, 5 years in total. There were 4 years without me and then I only helped for the final year.
–: Oh? I only just realized now but it only took a year from when you joined the project, Iwata-san?
Itoi: That’s right. It was quick.
Iwata: That’s because many of the individual elements were already completed. The graphics. scenarios, and sound, to name a few, were already completed. They pieces were all there.
–: But it didn’t work, right?
Iwata: No, it didn’t work. (laughs)
–: It’s incredible to think that it took only a year to get such a well-known core RPG like that working and on sale.
Itoi: Yeah.
Iwata: In about half a year we were able to connect all the pieces together and make the game playable. From there it had to be refined further. It took another half year to fix all the details.
Itoi: Still, it was quick. It’s remarkable.
Iwata: Even still, it was because there were the four years of work already done that made Mother 2 what it is. Without that, we wouldn’t have been able to complete it so easily in a year. It’s not as if those 4 years were a total waste. All the work and lessons learned from failed attempts everyone put in over 4 years made it into the game.
The Beginnings of Mother 2
MOTHER 2 Times: Interview with programmers
The five layers of copy protection hell
~ 1995 ~
Creatures Inc. (successor to Itoi's Ape Inc.): founding member
Iwata: I was involved in setting up Creatures Inc.
Just Making The Last Train
~ 1998 ~
Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun (Itoi's current company): founding member, IT manager
Itoi: Some of our new staffs may not know, but Mr.Iwata was one of the start-up members of Hobonichi.
Iwata: I was the IT manager of Hobonichi. (laugh) Is it still valid?
Itoi: Of course, yes. I don't remember firing you. (laugh)
All: (laugh)
Iwata: For those who don't know, Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun started on June 6th, 1998. About one month before that, I met Mr.Itoi. He took me to Nezumiana (where the office of Tokyo Itoi Shigesato Office was located at the time), and he said "I want to start up a web site here". I was knocked off of my feet. This was only one month before the start up!
All: (laugh)
Reminiscence of the IT Manager
Pokemon Red & Green (GB, Western localization): localization coordination
Ishihara: Red and Green had turned into such a phenomenon in Japan that it was requested that we release them in America. But working on the overseas versions was going to set back the development of Gold and Silver even further.
Iwata: Although I wasn't working for Nintendo at that stage, I ended up acting as a go-between for Nintendo and you for some reason. (laughs)
Ishihara: That's right.
Iwata: At that time I wasn’t a Nintendo employee but was President of HAL Laboratory. At the same time, I was a board member at Creatures Inc. and I ended up being involved in analysing the best way to localise the overseas versions of Red and Green. For that reason, I got hold of the source code for Red and Green and I would study that and suggest ways to localise it to the relevant department at Nintendo.
Just Being President Was A Waste!
Pocket Monsters' Stadium (N64, Japan only): producer
Iwata: Right. (laughs) You decided to release Pokémon Stadium for the Nintendo 64 and the first task was to analyze the Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green battle logic and send it over to Miyamoto-san and his team. You'd normally expect there to be a specification document, but there was nothing of the sort...
Morimoto: I'm so sorry! (laughs)
Iwata: No, no, it's fine! (laughs) Studying the program for the Pokémon battle system was part of my job.
Morimoto: I created that battle program and it really took a long time to put together. But when I heard that Iwata-san had been able to port it over in about a week and that it was already working... Well, I thought: "What kind of company president is this!?"(laughs)
All: (laughter)
Morimoto: I was saying things like: "Is that guy a programmer? Or is he the President?"(laughs)
Iwata: To be blunt, at the time I was more of a programmer than I was a company president. (laughs)
Morimoto: (laughs) I was really taken aback that you could get to grips with such a complicated program in such a short space of time.
Ishihara: I remember thinking that there just weren't that many people out there who would be able to read the entire Game Boy source code, which was by no means written in a highly-refined programming language, and grasp how everything connected with everything else. So Iwata-san, you analyzed the whole thing and reworked the code, decided on the way to localize Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green, got the battle system running on N64... I was surprised that you managed all of that...
Iwata: Well at that time, I felt that for the whole team at Nintendo, the biggest priority was not to do anything that would adversely influence the development of Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver. So I very naturally slotted in on the development side for Pokémon.
Just Being President Was A Waste!
Thanks for putting this together!
