While The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask enjoys turning 25 this year, art director Takaya Imamura has shared an interesting story on X that occurred during development. A TV station offered Imamura to appear in a portrait drawing competition which would inevitably take him away from the game for an entire week.
In the comments, Imamura acknowledges that he was fortunate to work with a great team that was able to continue in his absence without any workflow issues. That said, he also likely caused some trouble for a few staff. Although he checked in every day, the lack of the type of online communication we have today was challenging.
This is not the first time Imamura has talked about his TV appearance. In an interview with Nintendo Life, he revealed that he managed to make it to the series final of the competition. He also dropped the name of the Japanese program, TV Champion, though it appears that nobody has uploaded the footage of this particular episode online.
By the grace of the Golden Goddesses, the episode was aired the same day Majora’s Mask was released. Footage of the game was inserted into Imamura’s profile segment creating some free promotion for the game. Clearly the universe was rewarding him for his hard work designing the greatest Legend of Zelda character of all time, Tingle.
