How Satoru Iwata Saved Earthbound
Channel: Video Game Story Time
Date: 2017-09-22

If it weren't for legendary programmer Satoru Iwata, the iconic cult classic Super Nintendo game Earthbound might never have been completed.

In celebration of the upcoming release of the SNES Mini, we're working on a series of videos highlighting some of the console's most noteworthy games. Next time we'll be tackling Star Fox, but for now, let's focus on Shigesato Itoi's crowning video game achievement.

It also doesn't hurt that Earthbound is our most requested video, so we figured we owed it to you to tackle this subject.

We've stayed away from delving too deeply into the game's history - we're planning a follow up video that will show up at a later date all about Shigesato Itoi himself, in which we'll cover the full history of all three Mother games. For now, here's hoping you enjoy learning about how Satoru Iwata contributed to the second game in the series, lending his programming skills, but also his managerial talents, to making Earthbound's code run nice and smoothly.

The majority of the information for this video came from a series of interviews that Shigesato Itoi and Satoru Iwata did together over the years since the release of the game. It's really cute to read their comments - it's clear that these two were actual friends, and that they had a lot of fun hanging out together and just chatting. Basically, their time working on Earthbound led to a genuine friendship, and they just liked to hang out and chat about nonsense whenever they got the chance, which is really cool.

One fun line from Satoru Iwata in one of these interviews was the basis for this video's thumbnail, as well as a picture in the video itself.

He said that he likes to float down on a parachute when a game is failing and save the day. It's a great line, and it definitely sums up his contributions to various games from over his entire career.

The English translator for the interview, though, got it wrong, and accidentally translated "parachute" as "umbrella" (we checked this with a native speaker). Even though that wasn't what he meant, the idea of Satoru Iwata turning up like Mary Poppins in order to save a doomed game felt so powerful as an image that we just had to use it for the thumbnail, even if it didn't make it into the video proper.

Anyway, we hope you like this video. A big huge special thanks to all of our Patreon supporters, and to everyone who shares these videos with your friends and family, as well as on Reddit and other websites. We really appreciate it!

Breton Stripes (twitter.com/bretonstriped) and Kotor (twitter.com/kotorcomics)

Source Links:
http://www.1101.com/iwata/2007-09-10.html
http://earthbound.nintendo.com/message/
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2012/10/07/people/shigesato-itoi-shares-lots-of-delicious-life/#.WVykiFEkrX5
http://earthboundcentral.com/2011/04/shigesato-itoi-discusses-mother-4/
http://earthboundcentral.com/2008/02/shigesato-itoi-giygas-and-boobies/ (Some of these are for our video on Shigesato Itoi, they're all mixed in together!)

Music: Drone in D by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Music: