Why Star Fox co-creator Takaya Imamura left Nintendo and created Omega 6 | interview

Takaya Imamura was the rare artist who joined Nintendo in 1989 as the iconic game company was creating some of its memorable intellectual properties. Little did he know that he was going to participate in building up those IPs himself through character design for Star Fox, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, F-Zero and more.

He left Nintendo after 32 years in 2021 during the pandemic and continued teaching students how to do game design — particularly by coming up with something unique to stand out among all the games being created now and surprising players.

Imamura went on to create his own manga, or Japanese comic book, dubbed Omega 6, which is being published by France’s Omake Books. It was his chance to have the freedom to create something fully on his own. As a new IP, he feels like it’s easier for a startup to make such new games than an established company like Nintendo.

And he turned retro future sci-fi concept into a game with the help of a team of game developers — the publishers are City Connection and Clear River Games, and then the developers are Happymeal and Pleocene. The Japanese version just released at the end of last month. It’s been announced for release early in 2025 in the United States.

Asked how he came up with the ideas for Omega 6, Imamura said, “At the time, I was living in Kyoto. There were more and more tourists there, especially from other parts of Asia. I got the feeling that there would be fewer and fewer Japanese people there, more and more people from outside of Japan. That’s kind of where–if you play the first few minutes of the game, it mirrors that core concept. You have aliens coming to Earth, migrating there, and the human population is reduced. That’s the core element of what drives the Omega 6 story.”

Why hasn’t Nintendo been releasing more Star Fox or F-Zero games? Imamura thinks it’s because star designer Shigeru Miyamoto has it so close to his heart and wants to personally have a hand in it. But he’s busy with other projects like a new Nintendo movie. I interviewed Imamura through a live translator.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

Disclosure: Devcom flew me to Cologne where I moderated two panels at the event.

Takaya Imamura: How I ended up at Nintendo, first of all, I joined in 1989. Back then there wasn’t really any vocabulary in Japanese to describe game creation, game design. Games were a thing, game designers and developers were a thing, but my impression of them was that they were all from a science background, programmers and so on, rather than art, which is where I come from. Then I heard one of my senior students at university had gotten into game development. So I thought, well, maybe I could do it. When it came time to look for a job I applied to Nintendo and I got in. That guy I knew went to Konami.

GamesBeat: What were your most memorable projects that you worked on? Star Fox was one of them, I know, but how big a part of your career was that?

Imamura: I always give this answer, but it was Star Fox 64. I did so much. I was the person who put together the original proposal. I was involved in the story, the game design, the character design, the art, the 3D modeling. There’s so much of me in that game.

GamesBeat: How many years was that? Was that close to the beginning of your career, or after you had already done a number of games?

Imamura: It was released in 1997. We started working on it, test development, when I was around 28 years old, and it was released when I was 31. It was about three years or so.

GamesBeat: Today it seems like that was a time of simpler game design, but how do you remember thinking about game design at the time? How different was that from where we are today?

Imamura: The original game’s design was Shigeru Miyamoto’s baby. He did game design on that title. For the Nintendo 64 version he was involved as well. I was consulting with him. He actually came on board on the project as well, so I was always going back and forth with him about the game design. In relation to how simple or complex it was back then compared to now, I believe that Nintendo’s game design, the core concepts, it’s always about simple, easy to understand game design. I don’t think that’s changed from then to now. I still have that–not so much ingrained in me, but that’s how I feel about game design as well, even now.

GamesBeat: How many times did you get a chance to revisit Star Fox over the course of your career? Did you work on any other different versions of the game?

Imamura: About six or seven titles altogether. The one I was the least involved with was Star Fox 2, which ended up being released on the Super Famicom. At that point I was working in character design and art. I was only really involved in overseeing the character design of that game. But other than that, all the other titles I was involved in some way.

GamesBeat: How do you feel about how famous those games all became? It’s interesting that fans are so impatient for another one now. How do you feel about how often Star Fox games have been coming out?

Imamura: I think the reason it’s so well-loved by fans is the unique blend of elements contained within it. It’s a science fiction game. The characters are kind of comical, but it’s not a comical game. It’s a more hard-edged science fiction, but with the anthropomorphic characters. That mix of elements is what makes it popular with fans, I think.

As to the reason why I personally think there’s not so many sequels–very much like F-Zero, it’s a game that Shigeru Miyamoto has very close to his heart. He doesn’t just want to fire it out with someone else doing it. He wants to have a big part of it himself. But he’s busy with other things, so he doesn’t get the chance. You can see how important it is to him, when it had the cameo role in the Mario movie recently. Miyamoto had a very core role in producing that film. I think that’s the reason. But obviously that’s just my opinion.

GamesBeat: I know you taught a lot of game design as well. What do you think are some of the core things you like to teach to students? Based on what you learned over your career, what do you like to get across to a new generation?

Imamura: Probably the main thing I want to impart to my students is that–at the moment there are so many games being released. A lot of them look very similar, feel very similar. It’s more about delivering a message, whether visually or just through the feeling, to give it some kind of unique twist that makes it stand out in the crowd. For example, even with UI, it seems very simple on the surface, but it actually requires quite a lot of thought to put together a good, usable UI. The same goes for game design as well. It might be based on an existing game, but I always tell my students to try to find a way of giving it some kind of unique element that makes it stand out against its peers.

To dig a bit deeper, you probably know of Gunpei Yokoi. He was one of the very early game designers at Nintendo, and worked on hardware as well. He was originally an inventor. He was always coming up with new ideas, new concepts. His DNA was passed on to Miyamoto. I think you can see that in the way he approaches–games are not necessarily inventions, but Nintendo games are always looking for a way to surprise the users. Even if it’s something they’ve seen before.

GamesBeat: I believe you decided to retire during the pandemic. What kind of feelings did you have about leaving Nintendo?

Imamura: At the time, I’d just passed 50. Game design, game development takes quite a bit of time, even to develop a single game. Especially when you’re at a bigger organization. I got to thinking about how many more games I would be able to work on at Nintendo before I retired. I started feeling that I wanted to get out, get some freedom, and do things my own way. Be a bit more flexible, perhaps.

Just at that time, the university I teach at now, the offer came from them. The timing was great. They also said that they would be fine with me following my own creative aspirations outside the university as well. I decided to take the opportunity.

GamesBeat: How did you come up with Omega 6?

Imamura: At the time, I was living in Kyoto. There were more and more tourists there, especially from other parts of Asia. I got the feeling that there would be fewer and fewer Japanese people there, more and more people from outside of Japan. That’s kind of where–if you play the first few minutes of the game, it mirrors that core concept. You have aliens coming to Earth, migrating there, and the human population is reduced. That’s the core element of what drives the Omega 6 story.

It kind of goes back to the reason I left Nintendo as well. There isn’t a team. It’s just me, myself. The story is me. It took about a year and a half to do the comic.

GamesBeat: How did it come to be published in France first?

Imamura: A series of coincidences, basically. The publisher, Omake Books in France, I’ve known the president for a while. When I was leaving Nintendo I sent him an email to tell him about it, and I mentioned that I was working on a comic. Half-joking, I said, “When it’s done, I’d like your help.” That became reality, basically.

GamesBeat: Was it easier to start out by telling the story through a comic, rather than a game?

Imamura: It was partially because it is much easier to do everything on my own with a comic, compared to a game. But a bigger reason was I’ve always had this admiration–I always wanted to be a manga artist. My father was one. I had this kind of romantic vision of it. That was probably the bigger motivation.

GamesBeat: Can you explain more of the story of Omega 6?

Imamura: The elevator pitch is that there’s a professor who creates basically Adam and Eve in android form. He sends them out on a sort of Noah’s ark in search of a new Earth, a new home for mankind. Omega 6 is the name of the spaceship. In their search for this new Earth, they find a planet, but they end up in a sort of time share in space. They’re stuck in a huge mortgage loan that they have to repay. They’re androids, so they do whatever work they can do – bounty hunting, delivery. It depends on whether it’s the comic or the game. But there’s different work they undertake to pay their loan off.

One of the messages I wanted to deliver, what I was thinking about when I came up with the story–these androids, they can regenerate themselves. They’re effectively forever young. It’s something that humans have always had at their center. We’d like to be forever young. We’d like to live forever and see so many different things. In Omega 6 there’s a new frontier out in space, and they’re meeting new people, finding new places. There’s a spirit of adventure, and being able to experience these new things forever. That was part of the core message within the story. And battles as well. Comics need battles.

GamesBeat: Is this a retro style of adventure game? How would you describe the kind of game you wanted to create?

Imamura: It’s an adventure game, a command-based adventure game. The comics and the game–it came about because when it was being discussed, the core system for an adventure game, the mechanics were something I could use. Effectively an engine. One of the core concepts of my comic is what I call “retro future.” That fits in well with this genre of game, which is quite an old genre. It resonates with users from a retro gaming standpoint. Plus, the genre makes it easy to tell a story and get across the concepts that exist in the comic as well. It’s a good match for a crossover. If we made an adventure game and went with a pixel art style, pixel art is something I’ve done myself. I could do all the art myself. That was another reason to go in that direction.

GamesBeat: How did you assemble the team that developed the game?

Imamura: Again, it’s kind of a series of coincidences. The publishers are City Connection and Clear River Games, and then the developers are Happymeal and Pleocene, the company I’m working with, and obviously myself. The way that came together, the president of Pleocene, Matsuya-san, is also teaching at the same university as I do. We got to talking and we thought it would be great if we could do something together at some point. Obviously I talked about my comic. That seemed to be something that could come together. Matsuya-san got on well with Happymeal’s president, Seki-san, and then Seki-san knew Yoshikawa-san who runs City Connection. It’s just a series of people who know and like each other getting together to do this one game.

GamesBeat: Do you think Omega 6 is something that works out better done this way, as a startup in a way, rather than at a big company like Nintendo?

Imamura: Probably the biggest reason–several small companies came together to make this. But it wasn’t necessarily about the size of the companies so much as their flexibility. I’m joking when I say this, but they indulged my selfish whims very well.

GamesBeat: What are the next steps for the game? Do you know when it’s coming out?

Imamura: The Japanese version just released at the end of last month. It’s been announced for release early in 2025 in the United States.

GamesBeat: It seems like it’s harder and harder to get new intellectual property going at the big companies. Startups seem like they’re the best at getting new ideas out. Would you agree with that?

Imamura: I’d agree with that. What I would say–to be honest, I’m just thankful to Yoshikawa-san at City Connection, Seki-san at Happymeal, Matsuya-san, all these people who came together to let me realize my creative vision. But yes, I think it would have been more difficult going through a bigger company.

GamesBeat: Do you want to keep on doing these kinds of new concepts, whether through comics or some other medium?

Imamura: Of course, whether it’s comics or games or any other creative medium, I’d like to continue my creative endeavors. At the moment, the strongest feeling I have is that I want to keep building Omega 6 into something bigger.

GamesBeat: The Nintendo museum is about to open in Kyoto. How do you feel about that? I imagine a lot of your work is there.

Imamura: My first impression when I heard about the museum is that Miyamoto wants to encapsulate his era at Nintendo. All the IP, all the creative media, the games, the films and so on, all in one place. To give a bit more detail, the era of Miyamoto-san, myself, Iwata-san, and of course the previous president, Yamauchi-san, when they were running Nintendo, I might not call it a golden era, but it was a time when a lot of new IP was being created. There was a lot of creativity going on in terms of growing new things. That era provided the building blocks for Nintendo going forward. Rather than necessarily new IP, they’re probably going to be maintaining, sustaining, and growing those things into new creative media. I’m very proud of being a part of that.

Disclosure: Devcom flew me to Cologne where I moderated two panels at the event.