Iwata expressed interest in the creation of video games early on and during his high school years, began producing electronic games at his home. The several simple number games Iwata produced made use of an electronic calculator he shared with his schoolmates. Following high school, Iwata was admitted to the Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he majored in computer science. Tomohiko Uematsu, an engineering professor, said Iwata was very good at software programming. He said that Iwata could write programs faster and more better than any of his other students. While attending the school, he did an unpaid internship at Commodore Japan. There, he helped the head engineer—Yash Terakura—with technical and software-development work. One of his main reasons for taking the job was to spend more time around computers and learn details of computers. Terakura would later be a mentor to Iwata. Terakura taught him about hardware engineering. Iwata and some of his friends rented an apartment in Akihabara. They formed a club where they would create and code games. Classmates living in nearby apartments called Iwata's room "Game Center Iwata". He would often show his games to the Seibu department store's computer department. By 1980, a group of employees there invited him to join their company, HAL Laboratory, Inc.