For many fans, this still seems recent, but in reality, this year 2023 will mark eight years since the death of Satoru Iwata, then president of Nintendo. His untimely death from illness prompted all kinds of dedications and tributes around the world, as he was a man loved not only by his company and his fans, but also by the entire gaming industry. The tribute to the GDC, the spiritual Monte Satoly from Zelda: Breath of the Wild or the dedication at the end of Star Fox Zero, among others, are particularly retained.
There were many more examples and emotional reactions from those close to him, such as Shigeru Miyamoto or Masahiro Sakurai, but as always, time leaves these gestures behind so that the pain gives way to the best memory, and Nintendo Switch players have come to get used to seeing a certain Shuntaro Furukawa, current CEO, as executive producer in the credits of each house game.
This is why we were shocked to read his name again in certain credits, especially in those of Super Mario Bros. : The Film at the cinema. This is not a direct dedication, since Illumination pays homage with its work to the animator Laurent De la Chapelle, but in the credits it wanted to recognize the singular Japanese developer and executive. Specifically, Furukawa himself appears as the president of Nintendo and below in the same image, Satoru Iwata as the former president.
One only has to look a little at the newspaper’s library to verify that, although it has sometimes been accused of being banned from lending licenses to transmedia companies and obsessed with the Blue Ocean strategy through only game innovations for the whole family, it was indeed Satoru Iwata the one who finally agreed to bring the Nintendo franchises to mobile devices… and also the one who was in negotiations with Universal and Illumination from the beginning to work on theme parks and movies . After all, that also seems like yesterday, but it was May 2015 when the deal with Universal was announced, which would later lead to the parks and movie fans are enjoying today. Obviously, these negotiations continued for many months before Iwata-san’s relapse.
(DISCLOSURE) Besides the special mention in the credits, in one of the last scenes in Brooklyn of the film, a drawing of one of the characters from Balloon Fight, one of the 8-bit games that appears in Super Mario Bros. The Movie, is glimpsed and known because Iwata-san himself programmed it, including that very characteristic mechanism for flying which, closing the circle, ended up being used for swimming in the Mario game.