- Did you know that the reason the Kanto region was included as post-game content in Pokemon Gold/Silver was because partway through development, Game Freak were starting to run out of cartridge space. Iwata was personally responsible for taking the game code, and compressing it to the point that the developers had enough space to stick an entire other continent in. An entire frickin' other continent.



- He was also the main programmer on Earthbound, and pretty much saved the entire project from doom. When development started to fall apart, he stepped in and pretty much rewrote the game's code from scratch, by himself. IIRC, the code in Earthbound is so complex and complete, you could actually build a working SNES emulator from it.



- He created the battle code for Pokemon Stadium 64 in a week. Without access to any design documents.



Hopefully people with little positive to say can understand why Iwata is such a respected figure in the industry. He's not some business suit who was promoted to the top based on his money skills. He's a genius level programmer who had a key role in some of Nintendo's best games back in the day. Whatever you may think about his blue oceans and whatnot, he deserves respect just for that alone.