I think that it is pretty easy to say that just about all of us have some sort of memory from our childhoods that involves Nintendo in some way. I mean, it is Nintendo, which really made a huge impact in the 80’s and helped to change the world forever. Most of us have been pissing into the vortex that is Grand Theft Auto V over the past few days and the truth is, that just wouldn’t be possible without Nintendo, Super Mario Brothers, Zelda and everything else under the Nintendo sun.
In a way, Hiroshi Yamauchi was a Steve Jobs before there was a Steve Jobs, as it was his strange, totalitarian tactics that helped to push Nintendo out of the realm of card games and being a smaller company into being the leader in electronic video games with the Nintendo Entertainment System. The NES just changed everything, it elaborated on other game consoles that were released and had a host of games that looked and played great.
So you’ll understand why it came as a shock to the gaming world when Mr. Yamauchi passed away yesterday morning at the age of 85 from a case of pneumonia. It’s a big loss for the gaming world as Yamauchi was really one of the first visionaries to help push the gaming industry into the direction that it went to today and that he was a hardcore company man, refusing his retirement funds when he retired in 2002 because he thought the company could use the money better.
