Hiroshi Yamauchi, a longtime president of Nintendo (1949-2002) and the predecessor to current boss Satoru Iwata, has passed away today at the age of 85, Nikkei reports.
Formerly the richest man in Japan, Yamauchi also owned Seattle’s Major League Baseball team, the Mariners (though he famously never attended a game).
A champion of the efforts to develop home consoles like the NES, Yamauchi abandoned his university studies to take up the position when his grandfather suffered a stroke. He led the company through it’s great transition from a maker of children’s toys and card games to its position today as one of the world’s great video game studios and platform holders.
Yamauchi passed away in a Kyoto hospital, where he had been suffering from pneumonia.
任天堂の山内溥元社長が死去 85歳 [Nikkei]
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9 responses to “Longtime Nintendo President Dies Aged 85”
The gaming industry lost a great man, R.I.P Mr. Yamauchi
A sad day. 🙁
A great man behind one of the greatest companies.
I would recommend people look at the All Of Your History Belongs To Us series about Nintendo.
Good watch for the start to present of Nintendo.
I’ve seen lots of people saying that Game Over by David Sheff is a good read too. Somehow ended up with a copy of it, might have to actually get around to checking it out now.
That is a good book: even though it only covers Nintendo’s history up until the late 80s/early 90s.
The best parts 😛
They actually were now that you mention it. Since the N64 Nintendo has never really been as good as it used to be.
There were a few good games on the GameCube (Metroid, Eternal Darkness and Paper Mario) but not as many as you used to see on the prior consoles.
When the Wii came, it was great at launch and even hammered the X360 and PS3 in sales but ran out of puff two years later. Then came the Wii U and the less said the better, 🙁
Heh, it was actually a fair bit tongue in cheek since personally I think it all peaked around 2002, with the GameCube and GBA. Doing all kinds of weird things like the DK Bongos or the e-reader, GBA/GCN linkage stuff… it was all just really cool.
Also I find that there’s a strange kind of charm to the 64 games that just isn’t there with the higher-fidelity stuff. I mean yeah a whole lot of them don’t hold up like they used to (I have no idea why I liked Mario Kart 64 so much back then, can’t stand it now), but there’s plenty that still do.
RIP.
I first learned his name from the ending of basically all my favourite SNES games.
What a hero he was.
..of all the dudes that should of had an extra life.
Goodnight Sweet Prince