Corey Bunnell, the most unexpected and unintentional inspiration to aspiring game designers.

Everyone has a dream in life. Some people want to become famous YouTubers, some people want to become actual Pokémon masters, and some just want to stuff their faces with ramen donuts.

Sometimes people make their dreams known to the world, and when they achieve them it’s a big event. But other times they keep it to themselves, and you wouldn’t know they’d achieved their dream unless you happened to find out through, say, some sort of strange internet coincidence.

And that’s exactly what happened when Reddit user Tizzlefix watched the ending credits for the new Nintendo Switch game Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Among the hundreds of Japanese names (as is common with Nintendo releases), there was one non-Japanese name that stuck out: Corey Bunnell.

Their curiosity piqued, a quick Google search of “Corey Bunnell” revealed this: (click pictures to enlarge)

▼ Screenshot of the Zelda credits on the left,
forum post made by Corey Bunnell in 2007 on the right.

It appears that 10 years ago, Corey Bunnell as a freshly graduated high school senior posted in a translator’s forum about his dream to live in Japan and work at Nintendo as a game designer. He’d already spent time in Japan as an exchange student, and at that time he was looking for advice on what the next steps should be to achieve his goal.

And then, lo and behold, 10 years later in 2017, a game gets released by Nintendo with the name “Corey Bunnell” in the credits. Sure, there’s a chance that it could be a different Corey Bunnell, but we’d guess that the number of Corey Bunnells in the world who dreamed of living in Japan and working at Nintendo, and then actually moved to Japan to work at Nintendo are probably… well, there’s probably only one.

▼ Here’s Corey in a video for Ritsumeikan University, where he talks about
how his classes there helped him get to where he is today.

All we really have to say is, congratulations Corey, and way to go! You are truly an (albeit unintentional) inspiration to those who dream of working in Japan and making video games for a living.

If Corey’s story has inspired you, then you may want to check out the top five ways to immigrate to Japan. Ten years may seem like a long time, but imagine if you’d already started down that path ten years ago today?

Source: Reddit
Top image: YouTube/Ritsumeikan Channel