Nintendo designer responsible for Tingle has announced his retirement

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Takaya Imamura’s unique character designs will remain a legacy at the studio

Tingle Legend of Zelda
(Image credit: Nintendo)

Nintendo veteran Takaya Imamura has today announced his retirement after working at Nintendo for 32 years. 

The announcement which was made via Imamura’s Facebook page includes a photo of him standing outside the empty (due to the COVID-19 pandemic) Nintendo offices with the caption: “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 anymore. As you’d expect, I’ll miss it.” (translated from Japanese into English by Kotaku)

Takaya Imamura is known for working on many different Nintendo titles over the years including being credited as main art director and character designer on Star Fox and the F-Zero series. He is most widely known though for creating Captain Falcon, Fox McCloud (who according to Imamura himself, was based on Shigeru Miyamoto), and the iconic Legend of Zelda characters Tingle and the moon (yes, THAT moon) in Majora’s Mask. 

Fans of Imamura’s work were quick to leave messages of support and to thank him for his hard work at Nintendo in the post’s comments, to which he replied to many thanking them for their continued support.

This announcement comes shortly after Nintendo’s proposed acquisition of Next Level Games, who are responsible for developing Luigi’s Mansion 3, and Universal Studios Japan’s decision to delay the opening of Super Nintendo World again due to a state of emergency being declared in various Japanese prefectures last week.

If you’re still looking for an excuse to get Nintendo’s latest console, why not take a look at our best Nintendo Switch games list.

Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.