From The Hip | Leave luck to heaven - An ode to late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata

I woke up this morning to see an incredibly sad flood of messages on social media from the gaming community. Satoru Iwata, the 55-year-old president of Nintendo, passed away on Saturday due to complications from a bile duct growth.

Iwata, who had formerly been an active Nintendo representative at industry trade shows, withdrew from the public eye for a short time in 2014 after suffering a dramatic weight loss that cued many into his health struggles. He later revealed on Twitter that after undergoing bile duct surgery, he was "progressing well", which makes his sudden passing all the more distressing. 

A software developer who rose through the ranks to head the world's most famous electronic entertainment company, Iwata originally worked at HAL Laboratory, Inc., a development studio responsible for producing top hits like the Super Smash Bros., Mother and Kirby series. In 2002, he inherited the reins of Nintendo from former president Hiroshi Yamauchi, who had led since 1949, an era when the Japanese software and hardware giant was still making playing cards and plastic toys. 

Iwata's time as Nintendo's head was analogous to the late Steve Jobs' role at Apple. He was one of the most popular faces of the "Big N" - perhaps second only to designer Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario. I personally became aware of him during the era of the Nintendo Gamecube, a console that birthed some of the most critically acclaimed games of all time (The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Metroid Prime) but sadly played third fiddle to Sony's Playstation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox. 

But despite the Gamecube's limited success, it was Iwata's guidance and emphasis on pushing out innovative hardware that steadied Nintendo's ship. The years from 2004 onwards were especially profitable, thanks to the launch of multi-screen devices like the Nintendo DS - the best selling handheld game console to date - and motion-sensing machines like the Wii. Throughout this period, often referenced by fans as the time when Nintendo consoles were "printing money", Iwata maintained a cheery, refreshingly honest demeanour in an industry obsessed with tech speak. 

"On my business card, I am a corporate president," he said during a keynote speech at the Game Developers Conference in 2005. "In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer."