The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask art director was a fan of the series since he was a student: "I have fond memories of working hard with my friends to beat the 'Second Quest'"

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"I've been a fan of The Legend of Zelda since my student days!"

The Legend of Zelda
(Image credit: Nintendo)

Takaya Imamura is well known among Nintendo fans for his work as art director on The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, creating terrifying icons like that creepy moon and Tingle. It's appropriate that Imamura got to make such a mark on the Zelda series, since he'd been a long-time fan going back to the original NES game.

"I've been a fan of The Legend of Zelda since my student days!" Imamura exclaims in response to a fan on Twitter. "I have fond memories of working hard with my friends to beat the 'Second Quest.'"

The Legend of Zelda first launched in Japan for the Famicom Disk System in 1986, and Imamura joined Nintendo in 1989, just a few years later. He'd first work on F-Zero, designing characters and graphics for the racing game, before moving onto sprite work for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. He "wasn't too pleased" about that, though, since he'd have preferred to simply play the game as a fan.

Explaining how the process for creating graphics for those old games worked, Imamura says in another tweet that, "back then, Windows didn’t even exist yet, and we used specialized software for our work." He adds, "Many creators I know say that the real joy comes from creating something interesting within limitations. I feel the same way."

These are the best Zelda games of all time.

Dustin Bailey
Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

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