Leslie Swan’s journey from Nintendo Power to Nintendo legend.

By her own admission, Leslie Swan isn’t a very good self-promoter, but she needn’t worry as her credits do a great job of getting across her credentials for her.

Over her 28 years at Nintendo, she has been credited on dozens of games as a localization manager, working on pretty much all the mainline Zelda titles from Majora’s Mask to Majora’s Mask 3D, in addition to games like Animal Crossing, and WarioWare.

Joining Nintendo of America in 1988, at a time when the company was still mostly a marketing and distribution outpost for its Japanese owners, she started out doing odd editing jobs here and there, before eventually joining Nintendo Power in the role of a writer/editor.

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We recently reached out to Swan to hear more about her remarkable career at Nintendo, from how she joined the company initially to how Princess Peach ended up helping Animal Crossing make the difficult journey to the West. You can read our conversation below (slightly edited and condensed for clarity and length)