At the golden age of 65, Takehiro Izushi has finally left Nintendo, the company that he has served with for the last 43 years. The living legend joined Nintendo back in 1975, working on the mechanical design of wooden beam-rifle toys called the Bean Gun Custom. He will then go on to become involved in the Game & Watch line of electronic handheld games, which was produced by the company from 1980 to 1991.

Takehiro Izushi is notable for programming Donkey Kong as part of the Multi Screen series in 1982, which was also the first Game & Watch to feature a directional pad. In the following years, he worked on the Game Boy Color, alongside several Pokémon games. Additionally, he has worked on the Fire Emblem franchise as well, including Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 for the Super Famicom and The Blinding Blade/The Blazing Blade for the Game Boy Advance.

In 1997, he eventually replaced Gunpei Yokoi as the general manager of Nintendo R&D1, which is the gaming giant’s oldest development studio. He remained in that position for many years until the late Satoru Iwata, then-fourth president and CEO of Nintendo, ordered a restructuring of the company in 2005 when Hitoshi Yamagami officially replaced him. Then, he retired from developing games and moved to the General Affairs team in 2014.

The final game developed by Izushi-san was Rakubiki Jiten DS, which was actually a piece of software for the Nintendo DS serving as a dictionary and released exclusively in Japan. Other notable mentions of Izushi-san’s previous work include Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, Advance Wars, and Metroid Fusion, amongst others.

After many years of contributing to Nintendo, we will always be grateful to Izushi-san for everything that he has done for the games industry throughout his 43 years of service. We definitely owe some of our childhood gaming memories to the legendary Takeshi Izushi.

Via Nintendo Life

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