Reflections on childhood and Satoru Iwata-san's influence on the same

This is a repost of a comment I made on the GB news article regarding the passing of the late Nintendo President, Satoru Iwata, on July 12, 2015. The page in question is linked here. I figured I'd save it for an actual blog post since it's probably the most personal description of my childhood memories I've ever posted on here... and probably anywhere else gaming-related. Hope you enjoy it, or can relate to the memories yourself somehow. If not, that's fine too. It's a way of sharing a part of my life early on that was probably only made possible due to several famous, and sadly departed, Nintendo employees, including the late Iwata-san.

I suppose it never occurred to me until now, but this man was in many ways at the driver's seat of much of my memories of gaming during my childhood.

My birth year was 1991, so unfortunately I had no first-hand knowledge of the early days of Nintendo as a video game company. My earliest moments with Nintendo were with the Game Boy/Color. But the first times I popped in Wario Land, or Super Mario Land 2: the Six Golden Coins, or Pokémon Red, they were particularly mesmerizing moments. There were plenty of others over the years.

My memories with my family, when we'd give imaginary life (though in some ways it still feels real) to plushes of Pokémon like Snorlax and Psyduck on a dull summer's day. When, on very fortunate birthdays, I'd receive a Nintendo console or handheld as a gift, barely containing my excitement for the fun times ahead. When my brother rented an entire N64 -- likely the one time in my childhood I encountered the beast -- from Blockbuster just to play Pokémon Stadium.

When he and I would play Tetris DX in the car on the way to some KFC in the middle of nowhere after a long day out. When I sadly traded away consoles and games in retrospectively misguided attempts of cash-in value at Hollywood Video/Game Crazy for a new game I just had to play that day.

I traveled, and in a small way, the characters traveled with me -- sometimes in hand, sometimes in my imagination. Even in college today I see the impact that Nintendo's had on my colleagues and mentors. A part of me regrets missing so many memories shared by gamers from previous generations, but if nothing else the history of gaming -- especially Nintendo's history -- is a fascinating, sometimes bewildering, and ultimately indelible subject of study.

Nintendo's crafted thousands of worlds and memories, some of which I have yet to even experience. My most recently-obtained consoles, an NES and a Super NES, sit mostly-completed and I hope to soon play my first personally-owned games for them. Not only that, but a recent ghost from failed business deals long since past, the SNES-CD/Nintendo-Sony Play Station, may have materialized in the public's eye for the first time in history.

Even when blessed with other companies' and developers' platforms, characters and worlds, I owe just as much of my childhood to Iwata-san, alongside Yamauchi-san and Yokoi-san. May they all rest in peace, making fun in ways only they know how. Our world may have gotten a little smaller, but thanks to them, it's larger than it ever has been.