Before Satoru Iwata was the globally recognized face of Nintendo, guiding the company through the DS and Wii triumphs, he was a young programming prodigy working at a little gaming development studio in Tokyo Japan: HAL Laboratory (Iwata once said HAL’s name was picked as each of its letters is one step ahead of IBM).
Iwata joined HAL Laboratories as a part time programmer while he was still in school. He was the only programmer for the company at the time. He eventually started working for them full time after he graduated.
Building his relationship with Nintendo.
HAL Labs was approached by Nintendo and asked to assist with fixing the NES Pinball game that was experiencing development troubles and had fallen behind schedule. Iwata and the rest of the HAL team were able to successfully get the game back on schedule. More importantly, it demonstrated to Nintendo’s Iwata’s programming prowess.
The success of Pinball led Nintendo to collaborating with HAL Laboratories on more games such as NES Golf as well as NES ports of arcade games. The NES Balloon Fight port was a notable game for Iwata as his programming of the physics was viewed as far superior to that of the original arcade game that it was based on. Super Mario Bros would later reuse this calculation scheme for the underwater levels.
Around this time, Iwata had gained the admiration of the then current president of Nintendo Hiroshi Yamauchi who put money into HAL to make them a second party developer. It was at this time that Iwata was promoted to a board member and development manager for HAL and gained the nickname the “Super Programmer”. Iwata would later collaborate with Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto (the creator of Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and other smash hits) on a racing game where he would learn that “Enginnering is not quite as important as imagination”.
In the early 1990s HAL Labs came upon financial difficulties with tremendous amounts of debt. The president of Nintendo agreed to step in and help HAL Labs on one condition, Iwata would need to become president of the company.
President of HAL
As president of HAL labs, Iwata helped push forward the company to repay their debts. He did so by focusing on creating hit titles such as Kirby’s Adventure and more. Despite his executive role, Iwata remained heavily involved in programming. He famously rescued the troubled development of EarthBound by rebuilding the games logic from scratch, assisted Game Freak with technical hurdles for Pokémon Gold and Silver (allowing them to fit the entire original game’s world and more into the space constraints of the Game Boy cartridge) and Pokémon Stadium (porting the battle system from the GB games), and aided Masahiro Sakurai in developing the original Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 64.
Management style at HAL Labs
Iwata favored the hands-on management style. He leveraged his deep programming knowledge to directly intervene in troubled projects like EarthBound, while also prioritizing understanding his employees through individual meetings. Iwata fostered a collaborative, blame-free culture by calmly analyzing problems rather than assigning fault, believing effective communication was key. This pragmatic, people-focused, and technically adept approach proved crucial in rescuing HAL from near-bankruptcy and restoring its financial stability. Iwata focused on leading with empathy.
Successful Outcome
Iwata’s leadership successfully rescued HAL Laboratory from the brink of bankruptcy and repaid its debts by 1999. This achievement greatly impressed Nintendo’s leadership, leading to Hiroshi Yamauchi offering him a position at Nintendo’s head office in 2000.
References:
Gaming Historian. (2015, November 23). The Life of Satoru Iwata. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4cJh2YgrKE&t=631s
Google Gemini 2.5 Pro was used to assist in writing this piece.