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 Second Quest is, of course, the harder version of the original Zelda game that unlocks after you beat Ganon for the first time. (Or if you enter 'ZELDA' as your name on the start screen.) It's not the most massive challenge the NES library has to offer, but getting through that Second Quest, with its remixed dungeons and secrets, still takes some serious dedication.
I’ve been a fan of The Legend of Zelda since my student days! I have fond memories of working hard with my friends to beat the “Second Quest.” I didn’t draw the key art, but I was responsible for several in-game graphics and their designs. https://t.co/covpOFIY1HNovember 9, 2025
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."
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