Yesterday was a very sad day. Oscar Yasser Noriega known as "Akira" passed away by COVID-19 complications, he was only 41 years old. You may not know who he was and I never met him in person, but I was his follower for a long time and I spoke with him some times through MSN Messenger many years ago. Akira was the founder of Atomix, a video game magazine in Mexico, Atomix also had a website and a TV Show. I remember that Atomix was one of the first gaming forums where I participated.
The first Atomix magazine that I bought was somewhere around October 2002, it had Kingdom Hearts on its cover. From there I started to collect the magazine as I wrote on the worst gaming experience post. For at least three or four years I bought the magazine each month, sometimes they had two or three different covers and I bought all of them. As I have a minimalist mindset I sold my collection several years ago.
Even though he was young, he was a pioneer in the Mexican video game industry. He often traveled to Japan and interviewed important personalities like Hideo Kojima form the Metal Gear Series, the late Satoru Iwata from Nintendo, Shigeru Miyamoto the creator of Mario Zelda and many awesome games and Tomonoubu Itagaki who used to work on Team Ninja/Tecmo for the Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive Games.
After some years he started other projects and lately he was working on virtual reality software. He also had a podcast called "Nerdcore" and not too long ago he was still very active. I remember listening to one where he discussed the latests Kojima game called Death Stranding with his friends.
Earlier this year we also lost a very important character of the Mexican gaming scene. Gus Rodriguez, he was the host, writer and producer of a show called Nintendomania, there was also a magazine called Club Nintendo. This magazine was before Atomix and I believe that Gus was a great influence to Akira.
Not sure why but Akira's death impacted me more than Gus's death. Maybe because of the age, Akira was only 8 years older than me. Seeing some of his recent photos he was a little overweight and maybe he also had a preexisting condition and that is why COVID-19 ended his life...
Take care everyone! This is something real. It's better to stay home and play video games than going out and risking our integrity.