Sayonara, Satoru...

[MephistoZX]

I was actually very saddened as well, and I wasn't really sure why, as he wasn't the most prominent Nintendo creator/leader in its history. He was, however, very personable. In the Nintendo Directs, he was very friendly and presented a warm aura about the news he was presenting. He was the perfect embodiment for Nintendo.

Also, I will always love the man for personally saving Mother 2 (Earthbound). When it was stuck in development hell with the programming, he single-handedly reworked it with his abilities. From pocketgamer:

When APE and HAL were working on the sequel to Mother, the development team was running into all kinds of trouble. Iwata, then president of HAL, looked at the code and said "I don’t think you’re going to be able to finish if you go on like this".

"I can help you if you would like but there are two ways to proceed," said Iwata, recalling the story in 2013. "If we use what you have now and fix it, it will take two years. If we can start fresh, it’ll take half a year".

The boss took what the team had, toiled away for a month, and came back with clean, rewritten, working code that would power that cult classic, Earthbound.