Today, July 11, 2025, marks the ten year anniversary of Satoru Iwata’s death. The former head of Nintendo lost his battle to bile duct cancer at the age of 55. While it has now been a while since Iwata had his passing, today, you can find many people connected to video games who are taking a moment to remember the man that brought so many gaming memories to countless people.
Starting off, Kirby and Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai posted on his Twitter account that today is also the 22nd anniversary for Kirby Air Ride. With him currently working on that GameCube game’s successor for later this year, that is quite notable. The more interesting part of this post is how Sakurai seems to be thinking of his morality a little bit, mentioning that he is about the same age Iwata was when he passed. He turns 55 next month.
Satoru Iwata and Masahiro Sakurai both got their starts at HAL Laboratories, and there have been many stories of Iwata helping with various development hurdles and convincing Sakurai to make new Super Smash Bros. games.
Former Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime also has taken some time to post an image of him and Sakurai as puppets during Nintendo’s E3 2015 presentation. Reggie notes how the two brought many smiles to many people, and that’s true. Not just the puppet presentation, but the two of them fighting for a Smash trailer sticks out in our mind.
Satoru Iwata saw a lot of highs, and some lows, while working with Nintendo. Sure, the GameCube and Wii U never took off the way the company wanted, but there are too many successes to focus on the low points. Nintendo Directs have changed the way companies reveal their games, the Wii and DS were adopted by everyone and their grandparents (literally), and in his final months of life he oversaw the development for the first Nintendo Switch. With how bad things currently look in the gaming industry at large, it’s hard not to look at Iwata’s track record and long for that kind of figure again.
