Sometimes, when it comes to important decisions, one should listen to the help of others. A former designer from Nintendo can certainly attest to this.
Takaya Imamura is a designer who worked for Nintendo for 32 years. During this time, he contributed to some well-known franchises and games, such as The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. The character Tingle, who also appears in other Zelda games, was created by him.
However, Imamura almost didn’t end up at Nintendo, but at another Japanese company. Yet one person intervened rigorously and told him to take the job at Nintendo: his mother.
“You are going to Nintendo”
How did this come about? As Imamura recounts in an interview on Gamesradar.com, he applied to both Konami and Nintendo in the 1980s. In both companies, the application process went so well that he made it to the final phase.
Imamura shares that he actually wanted to go to Konami because the office was closer to his home and he was a big fan of the Gradius series, which Konami developed between 1985 and 2004.
However, when he talked about it with his mother, she was against it and told him that Nintendo would be the better choice. Imamura says about this:
My mother heard that I would be well cared for at Nintendo, and she knew about Nintendo in general, and she told me: ‘You are going to Nintendo.’ And what can you say to your own mother?
Takaya Imamura
So, Imamura ultimately followed his mother’s advice and chose Nintendo. And this turned out to be a good choice for the world of video games.
What 2 game franchises did he design? Upon arriving at Nintendo, he was significantly involved in the development of 2 of the most famous franchises: F-Zero and Star Fox.
While he designed many side characters for Star Fox, he developed not only the story for F-Zero but also the characters. Among them was Captain Falcon, who is also featured in all the installments of Super Smash Bros..
Who knows how these game franchises would have turned out if he hadn’t listened to his mother. By the way, there are also game developers who become completely captivated by the franchises they originally created themselves: The creator of Final Fantasy wanted to test the MMORPG – now explains how bad it really is for him.
