Alright, I've never been one to sugarcoat my words before, and I'm not going to start now: I've never liked Yamauchi. It was his policies and mannerisms during Nintendo's golden age that led both to Nintendo's dominance in the 8 & 16 bit eras as well as Nintendo's Fall from Grace in the N64 & GameCube eras. We are still seeing 3rd party repercussions from his arrogance as president of Nintendo.
I respect what he accomplished as President of Nintendo revitalizing the video game market in the 80s, and the Nintendo he ran will always be fond in my memory as an icon of my childhood, even if it was rather insidious in reality. That said, I can't say I feel altogether bad about one of the biggest obstacles to removing Iwata as head of Nintendo being gone now. I'll be interested to see what happens once his controlling interest in Nintendo passes to its new owner, someone who doesn't have the weight hanging over their head of being the one who appointed Iwata.