When Imamura was in college, he was an enthusiastic gamer who had played several Famicom titles including Metroid, Zanac and Super Mario Bros. 3, but he still wanted to be a manga artist, his childhood dream.
[1] Imamura applied for a job at Nintendo because he thought he could help illustrate box art and instruction booklets, wanting to join the video game industry in any way possible.
Learning how to use one, the first game he worked on was F-Zero (1990), where he reworked and edited sci-fi racing vehicle concepts created by director Kazunobu Shimizu.
While they initially had wheels, they were made to hover in order to save on animation frames, and drew inspiration from Tim Burton's Batman (1989), a seminal film that established the format for modern comic book movies.
[2][3] Additionally, he drew animation patterns and characters, as well as designing the game's courses, due to the small team size of less than 10 people.
This comic was approved by Nintendo and ultimately influenced the look and style of subsequent series entries, despite Falcon himself not featuring in the original game.
[1] He stated the series would require a "grand idea" to revive, saying that F-Zero's absence was due to Mario Kart's popularity as a racing game.
Following the 2015 death of former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, Miyamoto became too busy in his role as Creative Fellow to oversee individual game projects.
[3] He stated that the company being empty made cleaning out his desk "a lot easier", but regretted he could not say goodbye to Miyamoto in person, and was invited to meet with him after the pandemic.
[1] Following his tenure at Nintendo, Imamura was hired as a teacher at the International Professional University of Technology in Osaka and created the manga Omega 6 during his break time, which was initially published in France.