Nintendo legend Takashi Tezuka is retiring from his leadership role at Nintendo after more than 40 years at the company, where he helped design some of the Japanese giant’s best-loved games.
Tezuka’s departure was announced in an official document outlining upcoming personnel changes at Nintendo as part of the company’s quarterly earnings release. Now serving as a company executive, Tezuka joined Nintendo in 1984, when he was initially brought on part-time to assist with development. punch out!!. Tezuka was famously not a big gaming enthusiast at the time, to the extent that he apparently never even came across pac man When he started at Kyoto Company.
But it didn’t take long for the Osaka-born designer to learn his way around a controller, as he was soon assisting Shigeru Miyamoto in its development. Super Mario Bros for the NES, which would become a lasting creative partnership. He later helped Miyamoto create the original design the Legend of ZeldaWhich he directed and wrote.
In Tezuka’s early career he also directed super mario bros 3, super mario world, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past And yoshi’s island. He was also an assistant director super mario 64 and supervised the development of early 3D Zelda entries on the N64.
Tezuka has worked on countless Nintendo games in his four decades at the company, and joined the board of directors in 2018. His most recent credits include super mario wonder and its 2026 dlc Meet at Bellabell Park, Princess Peach: Showtime! And Mario and Luigi: Brotherhood.
It’s unclear whether Tezuka will have any kind of role at Nintendo going forward, but he is one of the company’s few old guards without whom it is likely preparing for a future. At 65, Tezuka is actually eight years younger than Miyamoto, who is still involved with Nintendo and a growing number of its extracurricular ventures. But the Mario creator will apparently be gone eventually, while composers Koji Kondo and Eiji Aonuma, who head the Zelda series, are also reaching their mid-60s, typically the retirement age for executives at Nintendo.
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