When it comes to the people behind some of the most important games ever made, we tend to think that their time working on them was sunshine and roses. While modern reporting has done a lot to dispel that myth to some extent, there is still an assumption that retro games were made under perfect conditions with their designers loving every minute of production. According to a new article from EDGE Magazine though, former Nintendo designer Takaya Imamura did not enjoy the process of debugging and testing The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
The feature from EDGE was a retrospective on the career of Imamura and what he has been doing since leaving Nintendo in 2021. When talking about his early career, Imamura recalled how Nintendo asked him to work on Link to the Past halfway through the project to help design bosses and do some debugging. This didn’t make Imamura happy as he was hoping he could enjoy the game as a player rather than a tester.
“To tell the truth, when I was asked to help out on the Zelda team, I wasn’t too pleased about it,” Imamura recalled. “I didn’t really want to, and the reason was because I wanted to enjoy the game when it was finished, as a player.” He then explained how the debugging and QA phases were both particularly rough, creating a sort of negative association for Imamura.
“I still really don’t want to play that game – the testing was that difficult. Even now, if I just jump into the game for a minute or so, the feeling comes back. It’s like PTSD or something,” Imamura stated. The same sensation happened when Imamura was called to work on The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, the only other Zelda project that Imamura worked on. Much like with Link to the Past, Imamura wanted to “experience it as a player, not actually work on it.”
Imamura has been more open about his experiences at the Big N in the years since leaving the company. He doesn’t regret his time at all and is happy with the projects he was able to undertake. It seems like Zelda, however, is a sore spot for him. You can read more about why he left the company on his personal blog, which was updated earlier this month.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
