Did You Know Gaming details Satoru Iwata's work on Pokémon Gold/Silver

Pokémon fans have known for decades now that the late, great Satoru Iwata was an integral part of getting Pokémon Silver and Gold out the door, but specifics on just what he did have been a little muddy. Now, thanks to some fantastic detective work by the gang at Did You Know Gaming, we have much better insight into what Iwata did behind-the-scenes.

According to DYKG, Iwata was responsible for writing a piece of code that helped speed up loading in a number of instances. The code helped battles start up quicker, shaved off the time it took for Pokémon to come out, and more. Even more fascinating, the work Iwata did here was actually a take on the same tweaks he did for Earthbound!

That’s not all that Iwata did for Pokémon Gold and Silver, as he also managed to shrink the overall storage space the games took up. This was due to the efficiency that Iwata’s code provided, making for a more compact distribution. This, coupled with the fact that Game Freak used a one megabyte Game Boy cartridge for the games, meant that there was plenty of room for every feature and element the devs wanted.