It’s the end of an era for WarioWare, as series mainstay Goro Abe has confirmed his departure from Nintendo. Abe, who has worked on every single WarioWare title since the very beginning, is trading in his dev kit for a chalkboard to become a professor at the Osaka Electro-Communication University. He’ll be teaching in the Department of Digital Games, passing on his wealth of knowledge to the next generation of developers.

For over two decades, Abe-san’s unique brand of humour and design sensibility has been a core ingredient in the microgame mayhem we’ve all come to love. From the GBA original to the more recent entries on Switch, his influence helped define the series’ manic, irreverent charm. It’s a huge loss for Nintendo, but what a win for his future students. We wish him all the best in his new chapter—hopefully, he’ll inspire a whole new wave of weird and wonderful game creators.