Acclaimed Nintendo dev was traumatized from working on ‘The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past’: “I still really don’t want to play that game”

Takaya Imamura is one of the most important names at Nintendo. The 58-year-old video game designer had an integral role in such iconic Nintendo titles as F-Zero, Star Fox and the The Legend of Zelda.

That being said, despite all his achievements and milestones working for Nintendo — and having his dream job as a designer in the video game industry — not everything has been smooth-sailing for Imamura. He recounted one experience which working on 1991’s A Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the SNES, one of the most revered video games of all time.

When working on A Link to the Past, Imamura, who designed the game’s logo, the map of Hyrule and many of the game’s bosses, also had to work on QA, or quality assurance. Quality assurance is a crucial part of the development process and involves testing games to find bugs, glitches, or other issues before it’s released to the public.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past/Nintendo

According to Imamura, working as QA on A Link to the Past soured his experience with the classic game, such that he still has yet to play the game through in normal fashion to this day.

“To tell the truth, when I was asked to help out on the Zelda [A Link to the Past] team, I wasn’t too pleased about it,” he revealed in the latest issue of Edge Magazine. “I didn’t really want to, and the reason was because I wanted to enjoy the game when it was finished, as a player. I can remember that feeling even now.”

Imamura added, “I also remember that the debugging, the QA, was really tough, having to do the same thing over and over again. I still really don’t want to play that game – the testing was that difficult. Even now, if I just jump into the game for a minute or so, the feeling comes back. It’s like PTSD or something.”

Lucky for us, Imamura wasn’t soured completely on the franchise when working on A Link to the Past, as he’d go on to become art director for the highly-acclaimed Majora’s Mask from 2000.

What do you think of the fact that Imamura says he was traumatized from working on ‘The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past’? Hopefully when a few more years go by he’ll be able to get over his agony and sit down to play the game on the Super NES or Switch 2 as it was meant to be played.