Takaya Imamura is a big proponent of leveraging one’s strengths. Speaking to VGC in August, the veteran art director told us that his new project, Omega 6, has similarities to his previous work because his ‘retro future’ style is “the only thing I can draw.”
It’s a pretty humble comment from a man whose previous character designs are among the most iconic in video game history. If you’re not familiar with his name, you’re probably familiar with his work: throughout his 30 years working at Nintendo, Imamura was an integral part of some of the company’s most iconic games, including F-Zero, Star Fox, and the legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.
He was responsible for the creation of such beloved characters as Fox McCloud, Captain Falcon, and Tingle, and designed large parts of F-Zero X and Star Fox 64, as well as the bosses of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
Imamura left Nintendo in January 2021, the Covid-19 lockdown ensuring that his farewell was not the big company-wide celebration it deserved, but instead saw him quietly cleaning his desk in the nearly empty building and having a brief chat with the personnel department. staff on departure. It wasn’t the ideal way for one of the industry’s most influential artists to retire from video games, and that’s why his return with Omega 6 is even more special.
After landing a job as a professor at Osaka University of Technology, Imamura created the Omega 6 manga during his breaks. He was then asked if he was interested in making a video game based on the story. The result is Omega 6: The Triangle Stars, a narrative adventure developed by independent studios Happymeal and Pleocene, of which Imamura is the story and art director.
“It was far from the ideal way for one of the industry’s most influential artists to retire from video games, and that’s why his return with Omega 6 is even more special”
We tested the English version, which has since been confirmed for release on February 28, 2025, at Gamescom, and it’s an interesting release for the West because it’s a 16-bit inspired game based on a narrative adventure type of game. that we didn’t really reach our shores at that time.
While we were no strangers to text adventures, the visual novel style popular in Japan, where the interface is a series of menus with options, didn’t arrive here en masse until the 21st century.
As such, Omega 6 is curious because the combination of the game‘s structure and Imamura’s art makes it feel like a Super Famicom-era visual novel that’s just been translated, rather than something that was actually created three decades later.
When we spoke to Imamura at Gamescom, he told us that developing the game seemed like a good way to bring his career full circle, because it reminded him of simpler times. “I’ve long had a desire to be more of an indie studio and develop games more in an indie style,” he told us.
“While I was at Nintendo, this was something I always struggled with internally. As the team grew, the games grew, due to this need to scale from the initial core team to a full production team. When I joined I was working on SNES titles, where it was a much smaller team, and this suited my working style and what I wanted to do. So working with Happymeal and Pleocene at Omega 6 is like going back to those days.”
