- a translation by Siliconera of a 4Gamer interview with President and CEO of The Pokémon Company revealed the information:

Ishihara: Yes. On top of Uchiyama-san’s unconditional command of overseas development, he was also there instructing us to “hurry up and make the next title” [laughs]. However, we only saw one possible choice at the time, and decided to focus our attention on Gold and Silver rather than an English version, and thought “overseas development is just a dream within a dream,” and gave up on that idea. But that’s where one man raised his hand—HAL Laboratory’s president Iwata.

4Gamer: Specifically speaking, what kind of work did Iwata-san do?

Ishihara: To begin with, Iwata-san got the source code for Red and Green, and bam, read through it all, then began mapping out a course on how to make a foreign version for it.

Kadokawa President and Representative Director Nobuo Kawakami added with a laugh that source code analysis is something you’ll never see a company president do.

Ishihara: Yes, indeed [laughs]. Even so, Iwata-san first did the analysis, and with those instructions, Nintendo’s Murakawa-san [Teruki Murakawa, then Assistant Department Manager of the plan production headquarters] went on to work on its localization. The story I heard from Murakawa-san was also a very funny one. Murakawa was an engineer in the hardware field, but one day he was told by his superior to “go do an employment examination for the project.” This basically meant to go visit Iwata-san and for Murakawa to carefully examine and see if he could accomplish the work himself. So he stepped into Hal Laboratory, and you had Iwata-san there telling Murakawa-san about all the work he has done up until then. They say that the talk ended up lasting from noon until midnight.

More in the link:

http://www.siliconera.com/2015/12/30/how-satoru-iwatas-zealous-work-helped-in-the-unlikely-localization-of-pokmon/

Are you grateful to Iwata for once?

Pokemon fans from the west? Can you imagine your life without those games being localized to your regions?

Iwata keeps impressing me even more, even after his death.Saying that he was a remarkable man is not enough.

Considering the amount of units sold in NA and EU, localization was a smart decision.

Iwata kicked all kinds of ass when it came to early Pokemon. He's also the one responsible for getting the entire Kanto (RBY) map into GSC. It sure as hell wasn't Game Freak.

Iwata was the man!

I was almost always grateful for Iwata. When people criticized him and said for him to step by, I stood by him. I miss that man... ;_;

Very impressive, didn't know he helped with this game too

Japanese devs should take note, you can't be completely certain in the reception a localization of a game will have, might as well try.

Chances are most of those localization will be nothing to write home about, but shush!

He helped bring a franchise that would become one of the best-selling franchises ever. Good decision, such a shame he's not here to bring in the New Year.