Star Fox, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask Designer Retires From Nintendo

Nintendo veteran Takaya Imamura, the man responsible for designing such iconic characters at Star Fox‘s Fox McCloud and The Legend of Zelda franchise’s Tingle, has retired from the company. Imamura shared the news on his personal Facebook page alongside a photo of himself outside of the company’s Kyoto headquarters. He had been with the company for 32 years and designed a number of different characters in addition to the aforementioned ones.

“This is my last day going to work,” Imamura’s public Facebook post reads, as translated by Kotaku. “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.”

While credited with a number of different designs, Imamura also served as a director on Nintendo’s Steel Diver titles and as a supervisor for the recent Super Smash Bros. video games. But his designs for Star Fox and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask will likely be the lasting legacy of his work at Nintendo.

“I originally considered making the characters human,” Imamura said in an interview about Star Fox some years back, “but Miyamoto overturned that and suggested making them animals. We made the main character a fox because of its association with the Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine near the head office, and then for the other characters, we chose from among the types of animals that appear in Japanese folk tales.

As for Nintendo itself, the basic Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite, the two official models of the console, are currently available wherever such things are sold, assuming you can find either of them in stock. You can check out all of our previous coverage of Nintendo right here.

What do you think about Takaya Imamura leaving Nintendo? Are you bummed out about his seeming retirement? Let us know in the comments, or feel free to reach out and hit me up directly over on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk about all things gaming!

[H/T VGC]