In 1889 in Kyoto, craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi founded a hanafuda playing card company. He called it Nintendo a phrase whose meaning is lost to time according to Nintendos own historians, but which can be translated as leave luck up to heaven. In the 1970s, Nintendo eventually transitioned from paper games to electronic ones, making its own luck in the process. It has been a permanent fixture in living rooms across the world ever since.For budding artist Takaya Imamura, an art student who had been captivated by Metroid and Super Mario Bros 3 in the 1980s, working at Nintendo was a dream. Back in 1985 when Super Mario came out in Japan, everybody was playing it, he recalls. I was at an art university, studying design at the time. Back then, game design wasnt a thing people didnt even know what game creators were.Imamura assumed that hed need to study science to land a job designing these exciting pieces of software. But then he found out that the team at Nintendo that had created Super Mario Bros was run by someone called Miyamoto not a programmer, but a designer who had himself once aspired to be a comic book artist. Someone in the year above him at art school had just landed a job at Konami. So he decided to apply for a job in video games, too. To his surprise, he was invited for an interview at Konami and at Nintendo.People didnt know what game creators were Takaya Imamura in the 1990sAt Nintendos HQ, Imamura found himself face to face with Shigeru Miyamoto. We talked about the films that we liked, Imamura remembers. Miyamoto-san is actually a very good artist himself, and I brought in a manga Ive been working on called Omega Six. He really took a proper look at it it seemed like that impressed him.After taking sage advice from his mother on whether he should go to work at Konami or Nintendo she favoured the company with the 100-year history over the relatively novel upstart Imamura would go on to spend 32 years at Nintendo, beginning in 1989, the year of Nintendos 100th anniversary. (Imamura expected a celebratory atmosphere but then-company president Hiroshi Yamauchi deemed parties a waste of money.) On his first day, he was led through the drab office where his interview took place and into a new world beyond: the development building.Suddenly there were monitors with brand new games being developed, all of this fun stuff going on, says Imamura, It was like in a James Bond film, where they go into an office that is all prim and proper, then they go into an elevator and ta-da! I was lucky enough to be assigned to Miyamoto-sans team. Me and three or four other new recruits got called into a room with him, and he said, you guys are going to work on Super Famicom games. This was before [the console] had even been revealed! I was listening and thinking, OK, be calm but inside I was doing the Mario jump.Takaya Imamuras artwork for the SNES racing game F-Zero. Photograph: NintendoAs the Japanese gaming giant perfected the rules of platforming, wrote the rulebook for 3D and ensnared a generation with touchscreen play over the 80s, 90s and 00s, Imamuras pen designed many of the companys most iconic characters. His first ever project was the breakneck speed-racer F-Zero, and he dreamed up the games whole backstory for a comic book that would come inside the box, designing its most famous character Captain Falcon. Imamura tells me that Miyamoto favoured more western-style comic art over Japanese comics at that time, so F-Zeros look was more Marvel than manga. Nobody asked me to create these characters, or that world, he says. I just felt that if were making a game that there should be something there now, [these characters are] loved by people all around the world. It gets the old tear ducts flowing.After F-Zero, his next project was 1991s Zelda: A Link to the Past, for which he designed the logo, the map of Hyrule, and many of its iconic bosses. After that it was Star Fox. an SNES space epic. It was a science fiction game, so, at first we were thinking humans, aliens lots of aliens! Imamura recalls. Then one day Miyamato-san pops by and says, lets make these animals instead, and the main character a fox. And I was like, a fox?! At the time, Miyamoto walked past a shrine of a fox god every day on his way to work. He is not necessarily a religious man, but its something he saw daily and felt some kind of connection to, and well, hes the boss! Imamura laughs.Taking Miyamotos eyebrow-raising idea and running with it, Imamura designed most of Fox McClouds companions, taking inspiration from Japanese folklore. Miyamotos request, Imamura feels, encapsulates Nintendos unique design philosophy. A 3D space shooting game is not something thats particularly original, so Nintendo added something new to it, and in that process, you create something new as a whole, he says. Its tried and tested technology and ideas, but adding that secret sauce to create something special its what Nintendo does best.Looking back, I was extremely lucky to be a part of that moment in history Takaya Imamura todayImamura was named art director on Zeldas infamously dark Nintendo 64 offering, Majoras Mask, for which he came up with its terrifying, leering moon, and the onesie-wearing nightmare character that is Tingle. Looking back, I was extremely lucky to be a part of that moment in history, reflects Imamura. Its probably the time period when technology and the games industry itself changed the most, and in such a short amount of time.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Pushing ButtonsFree weekly newsletterKeza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gamingPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionAs the gaming world changed rapidly, so did Nintendos leadership. Programming whiz-kid Satoru Iwata was appointed company president in 2002. He had this vision that we need to build not just Nintendos customer base, but a bigger population of people who can enjoy games, says Imamura. We as games developers were seeing that there was a contraction in the number of people playing games, but then the DS arrived It was a games machine, but it also had Brain Training, tour guides, all kinds of things that were not anything to do with games. I remember thinking, wow, thats a pretty impressive vision.As Beyonc appeared in Nintendogs adverts, and elderly relatives humiliated their families at Wii Bowling, Nintendo saw huge success something Imamura attributes to a less arrogant style of leadership. Yamauchi-san was not interested in market research at all he wasnt interested in the data. The market is something that we make, he would say. But Iwata-san would look at the data. I think that more logical, facts and figures based thinking of Iwatas was what brought about the Nintendo blue ocean strategy with Wii and DS.My vision for it back then is still my vision now Omega 6: The Triangle Stars. Photograph: Clear River GamesImamura found those years a creative struggle. He regrets that he never released a single game on the Wii, struggling to get his pitches through internally. After creating a slew of downloadable 3DS games, Imamura left Nintendo in 2021 to go independent. His very first game as an indie creator? A playable adaptation of the same manga he showed Miyamoto during his interview 32 years ago Omega Six. Its a sci-fi adventure game that, appropriately, looks like a lost SNES classic, and its out next month.My vision for it back then is still my vision now which is quite surprising! Imamura smiles. President Yamauchi used to say that the name Nintendo meant leaving luck up to heaven itself, which meant putting everything you can into these games, and once youve done that, the rest is up to luck I really think, looking back, that I got very lucky at Nintendo. And now its manifesting in Omega Six.Omega 6: The Triangle Stars is out on PC and Nintendo Switch on 28 February