Former president dies

Hiroshi Yamauchi, the man responsible for shifting Nintendo’s focus from trading cards to video games, dies of pneumonia. He runs the company from 1949 until his retirement in 2002. Rob Crossley, associate editor of Computer and Video Games magazine, says:

You cannot overestimate the influence the man had on the games industry. He spearheaded Nintendo as they moved into the arcade business, with hits such as Donkey Kong. This man was the president of Nintendo during the NES, the SNES, the N64 and the Gamecube – the first two were transformative pieces of electronic entertainment.