Farewell Hiroshi Yamauchi

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On Thursday, September 19th, 2013, the former president of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi, passed away at age 85.

Yamauchi took helm of Nintendo back in 1949 and turned what was then a modest trading card company into the massive enterprise it is today which has numerous franchises recognized the world over. Since stepping aside from Nintendo in 2002, Yamauchi has given gamers countless hours of joy through consoles and titles released under his tenure.

If it wasn’t for Yamauchi, the games we play today might be quite different, for it was he that interviewed one Shigeru Miyamoto — the genius behind the popular series of Donkey Kong, Super Mario and the Legend of Zelda. Yamauchi brought the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES (known as Famicom in Japan), to North America in the mid-1980s and making Nintendo a household name. Under his leadership, Nintendo released a number of consoles in addition to the NES — the Super NES, Game Boy, Nintendo 64 and GameCube.

In 2002, Yamauchi turned the reigns of Nintendo over to Satoru Iwata, a former programmer who worked at HAL Laboratory, Japanese development company who created many games for Nintendo. Yamauchi remained on Nintendo’s board of directors until 2005.

Interestingly enough, Yamauchi purchased the Seattle Mariners baseball team after the previous owner tried relocate the club from the Pacific Northwest. Even more interesting, the businessman had never attended a game in person. He sold his ownership shares to Nintendo of America in 2004.

Yamauchi was married and fathered three children, two daughters and a son, with his wife Michiko: Yoko, Fujiko and Katsuhito.

Sources: BBC, Wikipedia

 

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