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Takaya Imamura—the artist who worked on several long-time Nintendo franchises such as Star Fox, F-Zero and the creator of Tingle from The Legend of Zelda series— has retired from the company after 32 years.
Making the announcement on his public Facebook page (as spotted by Kotaku) Imamura wrote as a caption to a selfie he took of himself in front of Nintendo’s Kyoto headquarters: “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 any more. As you’d expect, I’ll miss it.”
Imamura began his career at the big N in 1989 as a graphic designer for futuristic racer F-Zero and would later be responsible for designing many of the iconic characters of space fighter Star Fox, including lead character Fox McCloud. Later in his career, he’d also work on many of the The Legend of Zelda titles, including as Art Director on The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. He’s also credited as the man who designed Tingle, the iconic Moon from that game and Majora’s Mask itself.
In later years, he was credited on the Star Fox team for that series’ crossover with Ubisoft’s toys-to-life game, Starlink: Battle for Atlas and recieved an ‘Original Game Supervisor’ credit on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch.
