AN ASPIRING ILLUSTRATOR AND A CHANCE ENCOUNTER: THE UNLIKELY STORY BEHIND THE ARTWORK THAT HELPED DEFINE A GENERATION OF NINTENDO VIDEO GAMES
By Cory Brooks | November 3, 2026
Ask Kaz Aizawa which artwork he’s most recognized for, and the answer might surprise you. Despite his years as an artist at Nickelodeon and his current work as a background artist for Walt Disney Television Animation, some of the two-time Emmy Award winner’s most recognizable creations date to one of his earliest jobs: illustrating the covers of classic Nintendo video games of the 1980s and ’90s.
Kaz Aizawa with some of the original artwork he created for Nintendo video games in the 1980s and ’90s. These three pieces, along with 19 others from Aizawa’s personal collection, are available in Heritage’s November 20-21 Video Games Signature® Auction. Photo by Joe Bannister.
Before Aizawa was a veteran in the animation industry, he was an aspiring illustrator, fresh out of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and eager to take advantage of whatever career opportunities he could find. One particularly consequential connection came from an unexpected source: a regular customer at his father’s restaurant.
“I visited my father at his small Japanese restaurant in Portland, Oregon. We were at the counter, and I was showing my father my portfolio, and one of my father’s regular customers, Yash Terakura, overheard our conversation and asked if he could see my portfolio,” Aizawa recalls.
Terakura was impressed enough with Aizawa’s work to exchange information, but as time passed and Aizawa didn’t hear from Terakura, he mostly forgot about their brief meeting. Then, about a year later, he got a surprising call: “Yash gives me a phone call and says, ‘Hey, I don’t know if you remember me, but this is Yash Terakura, and I run a company now and was wondering if you would like to do some artwork for us for Nintendo video game box art.’”
HAL America Inc. President Yash Terakura (left) with Aizawa. Photo courtesy Kaz Aizawa.
Aizawa at his home art studio during his time working with Nintendo. Photo courtesy Kaz Aizawa.
Terakura was the head of HAL America Inc., the North American subsidiary of Japanese video game developer HAL Laboratory Inc. At the time, HAL America was working with Nintendo to publish several of their Nintendo Entertainment System titles in the West. To complete the project, the company needed new cover and cartridge artwork for the Nintendo games, and Terakura brought in Aizawa to spearhead the task.
What began as a chance encounter in a restaurant led to Aizawa creating the cover artwork for over a dozen Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy games, including Adventures of Lolo 1-3, Millipede, Joust, Kabuki: Quantum Fighter, Defender II, Air Fortress, Revenge of the Gator, and many others.
Aizawa’s illustrations for the video game boxes of ‘Millipede,’ ‘Adventures of Lolo,’ and ‘Joust’
In early 1988, Aizawa’s work with HAL America led him and his team to visit the Nintendo of America offices in Redmond, Washington, where he was introduced to the team working on a new project: a video game magazine offering player strategies and the latest Nintendo news.
“I met the team at Nintendo of America, and they introduced me to the people working on the new Nintendo Power magazine,” Aizawa says. “They asked if I would be interested in doing the artwork for the fold-out posters, and I was excited to be a part of it.”
Aizawa’s illustration for the fold-out poster in the debut issue of ‘Nintendo Power’
Aizawa’s illustration for a ‘Console Wars’ article in a December 1992 issue of the ‘Chicago Tribune’
The team tasked Aizawa with illustrating the fold-out poster for the magazine’s first issue, to be published in July/August of 1988. Little did Aizawa realize the then unknown magazine would ultimately have a 24-year run, resulting in 285 volumes and garnering countless readers throughout the world. In addition to creating the fold-out poster artwork for the first issue, Aizawa created two additional posters, one for issue No. 2 and one for No. 4.
Although Nintendo Power went on to become a beloved institution among generations of gamers, the original artwork Aizawa created for its early issues remained in his personal collection, along with his Nintendo video game cover illustrations. Now, nearly four decades later, those works are making their public debut as a featured collection in Heritage’s November 20-21 Video Games Signature® Auction.
“I hope the fans of these games and characters enjoy seeing this original artwork,” Aizawa says. “I brought my collection to Heritage Auctions so that these pieces could go off to new homes and new collections and be seen and enjoyed for years to come.”
