In his three decades at Nintendo, Takaya Imamura worked on some of the company’s most iconic games, including F-Zero, Star Fox, and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. He also designed Tingle, and for that, we will be forever grateful.
Today, on his Facebook page, Imamura uploaded a selfie taken outside Nintendo’s Kyoto headquarters and wrote, “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 expressed his gratitude for the past 32 years.
[Note that he mentioned the company is empty because many Nintendo staffers are working from home due to the pandemic.]
Imamura first joined Nintendo in 1989 as a graphic designer, where he cut his teeth on F-Zero. He went on to work on Star Fox, modeling the characters after his colleagues: Fox McCloud, for example, was based on Shigeru Miyamoto, and to design Tingle. Imamura also served as a supervisor on Smash Bros.
We thank Imamura for all the great characters and games and wish him an enjoyable retirement.