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Takaya Imamura left Nintendo in 2021 after 32 years because he wanted more freedom and a different way of working, and a university teaching offer that allowed outside creative work made the decision practical. Omega 6 grew out of an older ambition to make manga. It was not a dispute with Nintendo. In the 2024 and 2025 interviews he gave, the departure is presented as a decision about time, creative autonomy, and timing.
What Imamura said about leaving
The fullest account comes from a GamesBeat interview published September 8, 2024 and updated June 18, 2025. Imamura joined Nintendo in 1989 and left in 2021. Nintendo’s US product listing gives the same start year and says he left to work as a lecturer at the International Professional University of Technology in Osaka.
Turning 50 and counting the games left
Asked how he felt about leaving, Imamura said he had just passed 50, that game development takes a long time, and that he began thinking about how many more games he could work on at Nintendo before retirement. That arithmetic, not a single event, is the starting point he describes.
Wanting freedom and a different way of working
His stated motive was to “get out, get some freedom, and do things my own way. Be a bit more flexible, perhaps.” The interview was conducted in Japanese and rendered into English, so these words are a translation of his meaning rather than his own English phrasing.
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The university offer
The teaching job arrived at the right moment. In his words, the university “said that they would be fine with me following my own creative aspirations outside the university,” and he decided to take the opportunity. The offer is what made leaving workable: it provided income and a structure, while leaving his creative time his own.
Why the manga came first
Omega 6 did not begin as a game. Imamura said he had always wanted to be a manga artist, an ambition he attributes in part to his father, who was one. He also said a comic was easier to make on his own than a game, which typically requires a team. In his telling, the comic belongs to him alone, and he described no team behind it.
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The French publication came through a personal connection. While leaving Nintendo, he emailed the president of Omake Books, whom he had known for some time, mentioned the comic, and asked, half-jokingly, for help when it was finished.
From manga to game
The game was an adaptation of the manga, developed after the comic existed. GamesBeat reports that it is a command-based adventure game published by City Connection and Clear River Games, with Happymeal and Pleocene among the developers. Nintendo’s listing describes it as a 16-bit-styled adventure with RPG elements. Androids Thunder and Kyla search for a new planet for humanity, with treasure hunting and card-based battles along the way.
Why he preferred small partners
Imamura said the flexibility of smaller partners mattered more than their size, and that a larger company would have made his vision harder to realize. In a Time Extension interview published August 15, 2024, he went further: “I think it would have been impossible to make this game at Nintendo!” That is his assessment of how Nintendo would have handled the project, not an independently documented account of Nintendo’s internal process.
The story’s origin
Imamura linked the story’s migration premise to his time living in Kyoto and to a sense of rising tourism, particularly from elsewhere in Asia. He connected that to a fictional arrival of aliens on Earth and a reduced human population. This is his account of where the idea came from. It is not a statistic about Kyoto or about migration.
Creative control at the 2024 Gamescom show
At Gamescom 2024, Imamura told CGMagazine that Omega 6 was his first creative product since leaving Nintendo. He said no producer told him what to do and that he did not need to weigh commercial viability while making it. He also said he deliberately wanted the game to be easy to get into, like a Nintendo title.
His Star Fox role, in specifics
The headline’s phrase “Star Fox co-creator” is shorthand. The interviews support a more specific claim. In the GamesBeat interview, Imamura says he put together the original proposal for Star Fox 64 and contributed to its story, game design, character design, art, and 3D modeling. He says he was involved in about six or seven Star Fox titles in some capacity, with less involvement in Star Fox 2. His career listing also credits art direction work on Star Fox, F-Zero, and The Legend of Zelda.
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Asked about the future of the series, Imamura said he would have liked to work on Star Fox or F-Zero again but concluded that life involves choices and limited time. He also offered his own view that Shigeru Miyamoto is personally attached to the series and busy with other work, which he suggested explains why the franchise has had fewer sequels. That is Imamura’s opinion, not an official Nintendo explanation.
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In a GamesRadar+ interview, Imamura said he wanted to be seen as an independent creator rather than only as a former Nintendo employee. He said his creative freedom was stronger after leaving. The interview was conducted through an interpreter and edited for length and clarity. The line that captures the shift is: “I’m an independent creator who is working on something new.”
What is established about Omega 6 today
The sources cover different editions at different dates, so the table below separates what each one reports. The interviews date from 2024, and none establishes current stock or English-language publication.
| Format | Publisher or platform | What the source states | Source and date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manga, French | Omake Books (France) | Published in France; origin of the comic | GamesBeat, 2024 interview (updated 2025) |
| Manga, Japanese | Publisher not stated | Available in French and Japanese | Time Extension, August 15, 2024 |
| Manga, English | Not stated | Not established by the sources | No source reviewed states it |
| Game, Nintendo Switch | Nintendo official US listing | Listed as a digital edition | Nintendo product page; publication date not stated |
| Game, physical | Not stated | Not established by the sources | No source reviewed states it |
Readers looking for the manga should confirm the language and edition with the publisher before buying, since the only dated statement about availability is from August 2024.
Quick Recap
Limits of the evidence
- The account rests mainly on Imamura’s own interviews, given in 2024 and 2025. Nintendo is not quoted explaining his departure.
- Several quotations were translated from Japanese or given through an interpreter, so exact English wording may differ from the original.
- The 32-year tenure is a career length, not a statistic about the industry or about Nintendo’s development practices.
- His remarks about Star Fox sequels and Nintendo’s approach to new intellectual property are personal assessments.
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