Imamura Retires From Gaming Industry
After 32 years in the industry, Takaya Imamura has announced his retirement from Nintendo. Imamura has been with Nintendo for over three decades and in that time has created some of the company’s most iconic characters from Fox McCloud, to Captain Falcon –even the fan-favorite Tingle.
The designer shared an announcement of his retirement to his public Facebook page with a photo of himself standing outside Nintendo Headquarters in Kyoto.
“This is my last day going to work. I took a selfie with the empty office. I guess I won’t be coming in here anymore. As you’d expect, I’ll miss it.”
Imamura’s first project with Nintendo dates all the way back to 1989 and was the first F-Zero title released for the SNES. Afterwards he worked on the first Star Fox, also released for SNES. As the main designer behind both series iconic characters, Imamura continued to work on both F-Zero and Star Fox throughout his career with Nintendo.
He was later met with a terrible fate as he worked as one of the main designers for The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask and was the mind behind the notorious character, Tingle, the petrifying Moon, and even the Majora’s Mask itself.
Throughout his career he worked as a designer, director, supervisor, and producer on many of Nintendo’s best titles. Most recently, he worked with Ubisoft on Starlink: Battle for Atlas for the additional Star Fox content, and served as a supervisor for Super Smash Bros: Ultimate.
From all of us at COGconnected, thank you Takaya Imamura for your contribution to the industry. We wish you all the best on your retirement!
What do you consider to be Takaya Imamura’s best character? Let us know down in the comments, or hit us up on Twitter or Facebook.