Nintendo Wii Fanboy

When most gamers think of that sense of amazement the certain parts of Super Mario Galaxy seem to invoke, they attribute that moment to the Miyamoto touch, a direct result of the imaginative developer's attention and care. While it's a natural assumption to make, one shouldn't forget about Yoshiaki Koizumi, the director behind the critically-acclaimed platformer!

In a recent interview with Next-Gen, Koizumi championed the importance of surprising players: "If you think about games only as a thing that you interact with, you're missing the possibility of immersion. The inspirations that I tend to draw on for that all come from real life itself. Hiking on a mountain and seeing a cave and thinking about what's inside -- it's that sense of wonder and excitement I want players to feel."

Well, we certainly had a lot of that with just the Gusty Garden Galaxy!

Who doesn't love the great Satoru Iwata. He's a very kind man and a pleasure to be around (this blogger knows, he met him a couple years ago). Not only that, but he has a good mind for business, as he's managed to turn Nintendo into a crazy-rich company with the hottest console and handheld on the market. Certainly, he deserves this honor.

He isn't the only person from Nintendo to be recognized, however. Next-Gen's list encompasses 25 people from the industry, and other notable Nintendo folk include George Harrison and Yoshiaki Koizumi (the director behind Super Mario Galaxy).