Sometimes you need to ask others for help when making important decisions. A former Nintendo designer can tell you all about it.
Takaya Imamura is a designer who worked for Nintendo for 32 years. During this time he has worked on several well-known series and games, such as The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. The character Tingle, who also appears in other Zelda games, is his work.
But Imamura almost ended up working for another Japanese company instead of Nintendo. But one person intervened rigorously and told him to take the job at Nintendo: his mother.
Nintendo has unveiled The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
More videos
Autoplay
“You go to Nintendo”
How did this happen? As Imamura explains in an interview on Gamesradar.com, he applied to both Konami and Nintendo in the 1980s. The application process at both companies went so well that he made it to the final phase.
Imamura says that he actually wanted to go to Konami because the office was closer to where he lived and he was a big fan of the Gradius series, which Konami developed between 1985 and 2004.
However, when he talked to his mother about it, she was against it and told him that Nintendo would be a better choice. Imamura says:
My mother heard that I would be a good fit at Nintendo and she knew about Nintendo in general and she said to me, ‘You’re going to Nintendo.’ And what can you say to your own mother?
Takaya Imamura
So Imamura finally followed his mother’s advice and chose Nintendo. And it turned out to be a good choice for the world of video games.
Which 2 game series did he design? Once at Nintendo, he was heavily involved in the development of two of the most famous series: F-Zero and Star Fox.
While he designed many supporting characters in Star Fox, he developed not only the story for F-Zero, but also the characters. Among them was Captain Falcon, who can also be found in all Super Smash Bros. spin-offs.
Who knows what these game series would have looked like if he hadn’t listened to his mother. Incidentally, there are also game developers who are completely captivated by the franchises they originally invented themselves: the forefather of Final Fantasy just wanted to test the MMORPG – now explains how bad things really are for him.