Omega 6: The Triangle Stars is a lovingly retro adventure game penned by the legendary Takaya Imamura, who served as Nintendo’s art director for 32 years. As a veteran artist, some of Imamura’s most well-known contributions to Nintendo’s legacy include the creation of F-Zero‘s Captain Falcon, many of the characters featured in Star Fox, and the design of the iconic mask from the Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.
After decades of working with Nintendo, Imamura had the chance to fulfill his dream of creating his very own manga, Omega 6, which was recently published in France. On a streak of independence, Imamura has now adapted Omega 6 into an authentically retro 16-bit adventure game that benefits tremendously from the same imagination that brought Nintendo’s most memorable designs to reality. In an interview with Game Rant, Imamura spoke about his goals for the game and his approach to the various planets that players can explore.
Omega 6: The Triangle Star Isn’t Trying to Be Baldur’s Gate
These days, many games attempt to tell grand stories that touch on heavy philosophical topics, challenge players with deep moral dilemmas, or spin their heads with mind-bending plot twists. Storytelling in video games has reached unparalleled complexity and seriousness, and it’s something Imamura has deliberately avoided. Instead, his focus for Omega 6: The Triangle Stars was to transport players back to simpler times with a game that’s retro in both style and mood. Imamura elaborates:
This applies to both the comic and the game. In recent years, games, comics, and films really dive deep into meanings, character development, and so on. For me, though, I just wanted to take a step back. The game looks retro and feels retro, and that’s really what I’m all about.
So if there’s anything I want players to take away, it’s a feeling of nostalgia—going back to when they were younger, when they were kids, when things were simpler. Simple pleasures, that kind of thing.
That’s not to say Omega 6: The Triangle Stars doesn’t have meaningful stories to share. It’s a world where human lifespans have reached incredible lengths. Meanwhile, an upspring of extraterrestrials arriving on Earth has begun to displace the human population, leading to the construction of the Omega 6 starship seeking to find humanity a new home. With this as the backdrop, players join Thunder, Kyla, and their robot Prop on a treasure-hunting adventure that sees them interacting with all walks of life through each of the game’s planets.
Omega 6: The Triangle Stars’ Planets Are About Variety
Like any good space adventure game, Omega 6: The Triangle Stars takes players to several distinct planets. However, Imamura notes that including these planets was a pragmatic solution to the problem of environmental variety. It’s simply not fun to spend an entire game on one planet, which led the team to abandon its initial approach to the game. Imamura reveals:
The basis of these three planets comes from the idea that having a variety of locations to visit in the game would make it more engaging for the player. It’s about giving the game more variation, rather than having players visit the same old places over and over again.
In order to make that variation easy to grasp, splitting the game into three planets seemed like the easiest way to do it. At first, it was one planet with several satellites, but as we neared the end, we took a step back and thought, “You know, this doesn’t seem great in terms of scale.” So we wondered, “What if we boosted these satellites, these moons, into planets themselves?” And that’s where the subtitle The Triangle Stars comes from—it was added quite last minute.
As for the theme of the planets, it’s fairly simple: there’s a hot one, a cold one, and one full of treasure hunters and untrustworthy people. The goal wasn’t necessarily to add a lot of depth but to make it easy for the player to grasp and remember where things were, what happened where, and what kind of atmosphere or place they were exploring.
Sticking to the theme of keeping things simple—like a Saturday morning cartoon—Omega 6: The Triangle Stars‘ planets aren’t deep dives into diverse cultures like Mass Effect might have done. Rather, they are a friendly way to introduce variety, help players grasp their objectives, and foster a sense of adventure in this love letter to times long past.
OMEGA 6 The Triangle Stars
- Released
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February 28, 2025
- Developer(s)
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Takaya Imamura, Happymeal, Pleocene
- Publisher(s)
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Clear River Games, CITY CONNECTION