How Masahiro Sakurai First Met Satoru Iwata When He Was 18 Years Old

Today, Iwata-san publisher Hobbonichi published a short interview with Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai to talk about late Nintendo President Satoru Iwata. All the things mentioned below are translated by NintendoSoup.

First, Sakurai was asked about his first encounter with Satoru Iwata. Sakurai said that the first time he met Iwata was at an interview at HAL Laboratory. At that time, Sakurai aspired to become a game designer, so he applied for a job at HAL Laboratory. He was 18 years old at that time, and Iwata was a manager at HAL. The biggest impression Iwata left him at that time was his smile.

Sakurai further elaborated about Iwata’s smile – he said it’s the kind of smile that, when someone laughs, it really “comes from the bottom of the heart”, and isn’t a “selfish” or self-interested type of smile.

Also shared was what Sakurai and Iwata spoke during their first meeting. At that time, Sakurai used a very low efficiency word processing software (imagine a not so powerful version of Microsoft Word) to create his resume. Iwata fired up his word processing software to view Sakurai’s resume, and was surprised by it.

Sakurai believes that was exactly the moment Iwata realized Sakurai was a “very special person”, because at that time, not many Japanese people created their resumes with word processing software, let alone use it. Sakurai guessed Iwata was probably surprised that the young man before him knew how to use it.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks, Brandon.