The 33rd Golden Joystick Awards were held this week at the O2 Arena in London. For those unfamiliar, the awards ceremony honors games, gaming achievements, and select individuals who stand out in the gaming world.
This year, former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award for the extremely significant impacts he made on both Nintendo and the gaming industry as a whole. Mr. Iwata tragically passed away this summer due to bile duct cancer.
A Golden Joystick Awards PR representative had this to say:
Satoru Iwata, the Nintendo CEO who sadly died in July this year at the age of 55, was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award. A revered man of the gaming industry, Satoru was the driving force behind many of Nintendo’s products including the Wii and DS, and is credited for bringing gaming to the masses by making it family entertainment. Starting out as a programmer in the 1980’s for a subsidiary of Nintendo, he became president in 2002, the first outside of the company’s founding family. He was renowned for first and foremost being a gamer and was described as “… having the brain of a game developer and the heart of a gamer”. His contribution and impact on modern gaming is second to none.
Nintendo pulled in a few more awards at the show, with Splatoon winning “Best Family Game” and “Best Nintendo Game.”
