Random: Takaya Imamura Says Nintendo Never Celebrated Its 100th Birthday

We get it — not everyone enjoys celebrating their birthdays, even milestone birthdays. But look, Nintendo, how on earth could you not celebrate your 100th birthday?

Well, according to former Nintendo artist Takaya Imamura — the man responsible for the designs of F-Zero, Star Fox, and art director for Majora's Mask — Nintendo completely glossed over its centennial anniversary. He shared this during an interview with 4Gamer (thanks to Time Extension and TheGamer for highlighting this) on the upcoming video game adaptation of his manga series, Omega 6: The Triangle Stars.

Imamura says that when he joined the company in 1989 — which happens to be the year Nintendo turned 100 — it wasn't really focused on celebrations, in part due to the philosophy and nature of level-headed CEO and president at the time, Hiroshi Yamauchi (translated via Google):

"I joined the company in the year of Nintendo's 100th anniversary. At that time, society as a whole was in a bubble, so companies would take students who had secured employment on trips and throw parties to keep them from losing out, but Nintendo did nothing (laughs). We didn't even celebrate our 100th anniversary, and it was a company that never got carried away."

Reflecting on Yamauchi, Imamura-san told 4Gamer that the mantra of the company was something like: 'Keep calm when you're happy, keep calm when you're unhappy.'

Yamauchi's corporate culture influenced the way everyone worked at Nintendo, and this was as a result of his previous experiences at other companies:

"No matter how well the company was doing, Yamauchi would always speak harshly to employees. Of course, this was because Yamauchi had failed in many businesses, but toys and games are a business that is a liquid business, so it's right even if you think about it normally."

It's interesting to look back and see how the culture has changed at Nintendo over the years, but that attitude took the developer far, and it's still a powerhouse today.

Once known as Nintendo Koppai, the company was founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, and initially sold hanafuda playing cards, before moving into toys before jumping into the world of video games with the Color TV-Game in 1977, and the Famicom in 1983.

Nintendo has been pretty good at celebrating its video game franchise's birthdays over the years. Later this year, the Super Mario series will be turning 40 years old, so we wonder if we'll see anything new there.

Omega 6: The Triangle Stars is being developed by Happymeal and Pleocene, and is a 16-bit adventure game where you get to explore the galaxy with the aim of paying off a loan. It's out on Switch on 28th February.

Let us know what you think of Imamura's interview in the comments below.