Beloved Nintendo president Satoru Iwata’s tribute book is finally coming out in English

A tribute book for Satoru Iwata, the beloved president and CEO of Nintendo who died in 2015, is getting an English release this spring, publisher VIZ Media announced today. The book, Ask Iwata, is a translation of Iwata-San, which was first published in Japan last year.

“In this motivational collection, Satoru Iwata addresses diverse subjects such as locating bottlenecks, how success breeds resistance to change, and why programmers should never say no,” according to a summary of the book that VIZ Media shared with The Verge. “Drawn from the ‘Iwata Asks’ series of interviews with key contributors to Nintendo games and hardware, and featuring conversations with renowned Mario franchise creator Shigeru Miyamoto and creator of Earthbound Shigesato Itoi, Ask Iwata offers game fans and business leaders an insight into the leadership, development and design philosophies of one of the most beloved figures in gaming history.”

If you haven’t read any Iwata Asks interviews before, you actually don’t need to wait for Ask Iwata’s release to get started — they’re available for free on Nintendo’s website. (I highly recommend Iwata’s interview with Miyamoto about visiting the Louvre.) And if you want a preview the conversations with Miyamoto and Itoi mentioned in VIZ Media’s blurb, IGN shared summaries of what was published in Iwata-San last year.

Iwata isn’t just remembered for his Iwata Asks interviews, though — he was a well-known face of Nintendo, especially for his charming appearances during Nintendo’s press conferences and Nintendo Directs, and was a key driver behind unconventional but huge successes like the Wii and the DS. If you want to learn more about him, my colleague Sam Byford wrote a great article remembering Iwata’s legacy at Nintendo and on the video game industry.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/24/21337380/nintendo-satoru-iwata-asks-interviews-tribute-book-miyamoto-itoi