Imamura worked 32 years for Nintendo, and is famous also for creating the Zelda franchise’s map merchant, Tingle, who has made numerous appearances in that series and other games over the past two decades.
(His message, according to a Kotaku translation, says: “This is my last day going to work. I took a selfie with the empty office. I guess I won’t be coming in here anymore. As you’d expect, I’ll miss it.”)
Imamura joined Nintendo in 1989 as work was already underway on
F-Zero, a Super NES racing game that launched in 1990. “After I joined, Miyamoto gathered some of the new employees and said we would be working on the new system,” Imamura recalled in a 2017 interview. “Even now, I clearly remember how happy that made me.”