Nintendo’s Hiroshi Yamauchi Has Passed Away At 85

Hiroshi Yamauchi, the 3^rd president and former chairman of Nintendo, majority owner of the Seattle Mariners, and one of the richest people in Japan, has passed on, reports Nikkei. No cause of death was given. He was 85.

Yamauchi is credited with turning Nintendo’s fortunes around from a small playing card manufacturer to a billion dollar gaming company.

Hiroshi Yamauchi was born in Kyoto on November 7, 1927. He worked in a military factory during World War II and studied law in Waseda University at war’s end in 1945.

Hiroshi took over Nintendo in 1949 when his grandfather, Fusajiro Yamauchi, suffered a stroke, and requested he be the new president, passing away shortly after. Hiroshi drastically changed Nintendo, moving its headquarters to Kyoto and diversifying it into various modern businesses until he found video games.

Under Yamauchi’s watch, Nintendo found great and enduring success in gaming, starting with Donkey Kong in US arcades in 1981, Game and Watch in Japan, the Famicom/NES, and numerous other consoles. He is particularly credited with reviving the home console industry in the US after the crash of 1983. He can also take credit for discovering and nurturing the talents of many of Nintendo’s great inventors and creators, including Shigeru Miyamoto, Gunpei Yokoi, and Satoru Iwata.

For many years, Nintendo relied on Yamauchi’s uncanny prescience for what consumers wanted to keep Nintendo on top of the gaming industry for many years. He retired as president in 2002, giving way to his handpicked successor and current CEO Satoru Iwata. Yamauchi was Nintendo Chairman for the years 2002 to 2005, and purchased a majority stake in the Seattle Mariners in 1992, of which he remained owner until now.

BBC reports Nintendo is in mourning for the loss of their former president. UPDATE: BBC has updated their article to explain that Yamauchi passed away of pneumonia.

Source: Nikkei via NeoGAF