Masahiro Sakurai Celebrates Satoru Iwata and Teases Kirby Air Riders!

Time has a funny way of “crossing over” into other things we happen to be celebrating or remembering. You’ll start out thinking of one thing, but then someone mentions that something else is happening today, and you’re like, “Wait, really?” That happens more often than you might think, and it literally just happened to Masahiro Sakurai, the man behind many legendary video games. Yesterday was the anniversary of one of his video games released on the Nintendo GameCube, but it was also the anniversary of the passing of the late Nintendo President Satoru Iwata. As such, Sakurai decided to honor them both in one post.

You can see the Twitter post below. Translated, it reads:

“Today was the Japanese release date of Kirby Air Ride on the GameCube. It is now on its 22nd anniversary! At the same time, it is also the anniversary of Iwata’s passing in 2015.

Ten years have passed since then… Iwata and I were about ten years apart in age. I’ll be catching up to him in age now, won’t I?

Right now, I’m pouring my heart into making Kirby Air Riders. It’s shaping up to be something great!”

There’s plenty to unpack here, so let’s start with the gaming side of things. The reason that he mentioned the GameCube title is that, 22 years later, the sequel is finally happening via Kirby Air Riders. It’ll be one of the first big exclusives on the Nintendo Switch 2, and gamers can’t wait to see what goes down with it. The first was very much a “cult classic” title, and even Sakurai admitted on his YouTube channel that he would love to dive back into it and make it even grander. With the power of the Switch 2 behind him, he has that opportunity, so it’ll be interesting to see what he does with it.

As for Sakurai and Iwata, they were friends in the best of ways. During the “Creating Games” YouTube series, Masahiro Sakurai explained that it was Iwata who hired him at Nintendo. Then, multiple times during his time with them, Iwata would aid Sakurai in whatever way he needed. Even when he was President of Nintendo, he would aid Sakurai, even saving one of his games at one point. Sakurai treasured doing chats and dinners with Iwata and even remembers his last time with him.

It’s clear that Sakurai still misses Iwata a lot, but honors him by keeping his memory alive and by making great games.