Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s US programmer one day dreamed of working for Nintendo, ten years later his wish came true

By Stephany Nunneley

Back in 2007, American high school student Corey Bunnell shared his dream of becoming a game designer at Nintendo on a message board. It’s now 2017, and it turns out, his dream came true.

Bunnell not only works for Nintendo, but he is credited along with Shogo Kihara as one of the wildlife programmers for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

After noticing an English name in the game’s credits, redditor Tizzlefix did some digging, and found a post by Bunnell from 2007 on the TranslatorsCafe message board (thanks, Calamity Jen).

In the post, he discussed how he spent the majority of his senior year as an exchange student in Japan, and how he one day wished to return there to live and work for Nintendo.

“My dream is to live in Japan and work for Nintendo as a game designer,” Bunnell wrote. “I realize this is a very large goal but it has been my dream since I first played Mario. I need help figuring out how to achieve this goal.”

Bunnell went on to attend Ritsumeikan University in Japan, as you can see in the student voices video below. The rest, as they say, is history.

Well done, Corey, and thank for proving to those of us who are the “half-empty” types that dreams really can come true if you want it bad enough.