A Nintendo legend is about to call it a day, as veteran game designer and director Takashi Tezuka will leave the company later this year. Nintendo noted in its investor briefing today that the 65-year-old Tezuka will depart on June 26, closing the book on over four decades of work at the gaming giant.
Tezuka first began his career at Nintendo in 1984, joining as a part-time employee while he was still studying at university. Starting with Punch-Out, Tezuka would then go on to frequently work alongside another Nintendo legend, Shigeru Miyamoto, teaming up with him on several projects. It wasn’t long before Tezuka was hired as a full-time Nintendo employee, serving as the assistant director and designer on 1985’s Super Mario Bros. and then going on to direct the first The Legend of Zelda game.
Over the years, he has worked on multiple Mario games and several other big Nintendo IP like Pikmin and Animal Crossing. In the modern era, Tezuka has served as a producer and supervisor on titles like Super Mario 3D World and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Tezuka joins a growing number of people from Nintendo’s old guard who have retired. Metroid Prime producer Kensuke Tanabe departed after the release of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, and Mario Kart veteran Hideki Konno has also left. Miyamoto appears to be the exception to the rule, as he now occupies a creative role at Nintendo, shepherding the company’s ventures into new forms of entertainment. It’s worth noting that Nintendo has a strong employee retention rate and a low turnover rate, which is in stark contrast to the almost constant news of layoffs happening in the video game industry.
In other bittersweet Nintendo news, the Switch 2 console is not selling quite as well as the company hoped, despite having a strong start last year. The Switch 2 is also getting a price increase in September, and Nintendo is predicting that it’ll sell fewer units than anticipated in its second year on the market.