Nintendo undoubtedly create some of the biggest and best franchises in the world and the development teams are exceptionally skilled. Zelda and Star Fox veteran Takaya Imamura has posted on social media about about his time at the company and said that the level of the talent working there led to him having a “constant sense of inferiority” despite his own natural skill. He’s not the first to say that working at Nintendo is extremely high pressure, due in part to the talented individuals working there.
Mr. Imamura said that he remembers “constantly wondering how I could demonstrate my own worth in such an environment.” He said he felt a lot of relief by leaving the company and working on this own projects, though he did feel sad knowing he would no longer be able to work with those same people. He’s not the first to comment on his time at Nintendo with Shinji Watanabe saying that it was like working with “celestial beings.” Ken Watanabe also chimed in and said his experience at Nintendo was both rewarding and extremely draining. Miura Koichi also went viral in a post from 2023 for saying that Nintendo was “like a haven for geniuses and superhumans, but for an average person like me, it was hell.”
