Ok, so here's something I started thinking about again tonight while pondering Iwata's passing. It was mid-late December 2005 and I was at work browsing IGN when I read a news story stating that Iwata was sending a thank you letter with an 8-bit SMB Coin as a digital gift to Animal Crossing Wild World owners but there was a deadline of course for redeeming the letter/gift over NWFC. The collector in me thought to myself, "How cool! A letter and digital gift from Iwata! I have to get my hands on that now before time runs out!" So the next day I bought a copy of Wild World, after getting my house set up I redeemed my letter from Iwata and my slick SMB coin as soon as I could. It was the first real letter in the game I received.
Even though obviously it wasn't literally from him to me personally, all I could think of was
Satoru Iwata sent ME a letter and a gift thanking ME for buying a DS. How cool! Much later, every time I would save another memorable letter in my post office archive, I'd glance at the letter from Iwata and think,
That's the thank you note Iwata sent me, such a cool gesture! Every time I passed the SMB coin in my house I'd think
There's the little gift Iwata sent me, I'm never selling or trading that!
I'd been dragging my heals for a long time on getting into AC before I read the news blurb on the digital gift from Iwata. I ended up sinking several hundred hours into that game. Now that I look back on this little gesture, I think this is a great example which really goes to show what an impact Iwata had on Nintendo's loyal fans and the lengths he was willing to go to reach out to us and promote their games. If he hadn't gone to the trouble of sending that letter and gift to fans, who knows how much longer it would have taken me to play an AC title (never played AC on GC)? I never got rid of that letter and the coin, I saved both as you can see in the pictures below which I took tonight after opening up my old WW file. They're like a shining beacon of warm nostalgia inside the town hall of my now weed-plagued little village.