If you are a gamer chances are you don’t read many books. You only have so much time for hobbies and gaming is an easy hobby to spend a lot of time on. Depending on the games you play you pretty much are reading books, though, if you think about it. Anyway, whether or not you are a gamer I suggest you make the time to read this book. It won’t be that much time, if that helps.
What is it?
Obviously, this book is about a guy named Iwata. His full name is Satoru Iwata and he isn’t a fictional character. If you started following gaming more than six years ago you definitely know who he is. He was the president of Nintendo and before that HAL Laboratory, two of the best gaming developers ever. He worked on Balloon Fight, Smash Bros., and even Pokémon. Sadly the reason you wouldn’t know him if you only started following gaming more recently than that is because he is dead now. This book contains many of his quotes, a broad look at his life from an early age written in the first person, and even more quotes from people talking about him.
Once you open this book you will see that it is made up of a compilations of writings from the Iwata Asks series by Nintendo and the stuff Iwata did for a Japanese website, which is of course translated for this book. It still flows like a normal book, though. The Japanese website seems to be the source for most of the book, since Iwata Asks is often about specific video games and a small percentage of this book talks about specific games. Instead, you will mostly learn about programming, business, and relationships. If you are hoping to hear about specific games, I suggest reading the Iwata Asks series on Nintendo’s website. There is some detailed discussion of a few games, though, that should interest many gamers. If that is all you are looking for, though, you will definitely be disappointed.
The last part that discussions his relationships with others may confuse readers not familiar with the people the quotes are from. They are more famous in Japan so this will especially be a problem for people reading this translated version. The people get introductions, but I suggest researching them a little bit more to get a better understanding if you don’t recognize their names.
Should you read it?
In terms of length this book is far from daunting. It’s a bit short, actually. You can easily read this book in one sitting if you have a free afternoon. This isn’t necessary to enjoy the book, though. It’s broken up into parts that don’t necessarily build on each other so you could even choose to read a part that most interests you, if you’d like. All of the parts are equally enjoyable, though, so I would recommend reading everything if you can.
Overall it’s an interesting read that I recommend to anyone interested in the topics of programming, business, relationships, and, of course, video games. Others may enjoy it too but probably not as much. The book isn’t a major investment of time or money so it wouldn’t hurt to try. It isn’t difficult to read unless you can’t handle sentimental writing, which this has a lot of. If you are interested in the hard copy version it is of acceptable quality with no noticeable issues. The full title is Ask Iwata: Words of Wisdom from Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s Legendary CEO, and yes, you should read it.
If you decide to purchase this book through one of the links below this blog will receive a commission.
