Takaya Imamura, a legendary game designer who spent over three decades at Nintendo, almost didn't work there at all.
Imamura is known for his design work on F-Zero and Star Fox, beginning with the original games in the early 1990s and continuing up until his departure from Nintendo in 2021.
In an interview with GamesRadar+ at Gamescom, Imamura revealed that he almost didn't take the job at Nintendo, until his mother intervened and guided him.
"The truth is, when I applied to game companies, I applied to Konami as well as Nintendo, and I got through to the final interview," Imamura said.
Imamura really wanted to work at Konami because he was a big fan of Gradius, a scrolling shooter series that Konami began to release in the 1980s, and also because he lived quite close to the Konami office. However, an intervention from Imamura's mother convinced him to take the job at Nintendo instead.
"My mother heard I was doing well with Nintendo," he said. "She knew about Nintendo, just in general, and she told, you know 'you go to Nintendo'. And what can you say to your mother?"
Imamura's mother pushing him to go to...
