Takaya Imamura, the man who designed Tingle, retired from Nintendo

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In his three decades at Nintendo, Takaya Imamura worked on some of the company’s most iconic games, including F-Zero, Star Foxand The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. He also designed Tingle, and for that we will be forever grateful.

Today, in your Facebook page, Imamura uploaded a selfie taken outside Nintendo’s headquarters in Kyoto and wrote: “This is my last day going to work. I took a selfie with the office empty. I don’t think I’ll be back here again. As expected, I will miss you. ”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 joined Nintendo in 1989 as a graphic designer, where he started working 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 in Smash Bros.

We thank Imamura for all the great characters and games and we wish him a good retirement.

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